tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594152825811315502024-02-20T18:06:27.858-08:00Ian McFadyenIan McFadyenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15485556320535200135noreply@blogger.comBlogger39125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759415282581131550.post-43951306142534104552021-03-02T19:45:00.001-08:002021-03-02T19:45:25.897-08:00 Why consent may not be the most important issue in rape<p>Many years ago I was part of a team of post-grad criminology students
who did a broad study of the crime of rape in Victoria. Among the conclusions
of that study was that the prevailing laws relating to rape were inadequate because
they treated rape as such an all-or-nothing offence, a simple yes/no issue. And I mean that in the sense
of both the issue of consent and defining the act.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The problem is proving, or disproving, whether consent occurred is very complicated. This arises mainly from the fact that sexual
intercourse occurs both legally and illegally. Other serious crimes do not have
this ambiguity. It is not likely that a person would be acquitted of murder on
the grounds that the victim consented to be killed (current debates about
assisted suicide, aside). It is equally unlikely that someone might consent to suffer
grievous bodily harm or have their house burgled. Those crimes have a <i>prima
facie</i> appearance being non-consensual. Sex on the other hand, is generally consensual; non-consensual sex is not as usual, though not as unusual as
we would like.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Not only does sexual intercourse have both consensual and
non-consensual versions, consent itself can be qualified, diminished or
cancelled by the circumstances surrounding its granting. The first recommendation from
the report we prepared long ago was that the crime of rape be replaced by a
crime which might be called Coercion for the Purpose of Obtaining Sex. This would cover any situation where consent was obtained by fraud, deception,
threats, blackmail, administration of a drug or any other behaviour designed
to override or distort the free will of the victim. Obviously, physical
violence which totally negates the need for consent would sit at the extreme end of
that scale.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">To a certain extent, this recommendation has now been adopted by
the introduction of Sexual Harassment laws which make it an offence to coerce someone to
have sex by, for example, threatening to have them fired, or harming their
career. The definitions of harassment also include the use of persistence or beleaguerment to "wear down" the victims resistance. Thus we have progressed toward establishing a scale of offences ranging from bullying and blackmail up to such things
as drugging and violence to obtain or nullify consent. The term "rape" however is still used to describe the more violent end of coercive continuum as if it were a crime with specific boundaries.<br /><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Framing a general law proscribing the use of coercion to obtain sex, however, does not assist in situations where the consent of the alleged victim is compromised by
circumstances that are <i>not</i> imposed by the perpetrator. For example, consent
can be invalidated when the alleged victim is suffering from a
form of mental illness, mental incapacity, sexual
ignorance, or the effects of drugs and alcohol. The last two of these are typically self-imposed by the victim.</p><p class="MsoNormal">This is a matter of particular concern. The prevalence of drugs and alcohol in social
situations gives rise to a substantial number of cases where consent to intercourse is claimed
and then denied, not necessarily in that order. Consider the following scenarios and please note any genders can be substituted. I have used "men" and "women" only because they are the players in the vast majority of these scenarios: </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span>1. A man and a woman meet at a party. The woman has been drinking heavily. They go
to a bedroom. There is a presumption on the man’s part, and it is assumed on
the woman’s part, that they are going to have sex but before anything can
happen the woman passes out on the bed. The man proceeds to have sex with her
anyway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rape? Absolutely.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />2. <span style="text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Same
as above. The man and woman go to the room. They indulge in foreplay, kissing,
undressing, touching but before actual intercourse occurs, the woman passes
out. The man has sex with her anyway. Rape? Almost certainly. Why </span><i style="text-indent: -18pt;">almost? </i><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">See
below.<br /><br /></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">3.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">The
couple go to the bedroom and start having sex. During it, the woman passes out.
The man continues to complete the act. Rape? Again, possibly but also possibly not.<br /><br /></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">4.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">The
man and woman have sex and the woman falls asleep. When she wakes she has no
memory of what happened.</span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;"> </span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">She realises
someone a man has had sex with her but does not believe that she consented to it. She
accuses the man of rape. Rape? Very difficult to establish.<br /><br /></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">5.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">The
man and woman have sex. When the woman wakes up the next day she recalls the
encounter and recalls that she gave consent however she feels the man “took
advantage” of her drunken state in which she consented to something she would
not have normally done. Rape? Not according to current laws.</span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">Clearly there are all sorts of variations
on these scenarios including the possible inebriation of the man as well.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">Of course Number 1 is clearly rape, and so
is Number 2, though a court may decide that by participating in foreplay –
which might reasonably be seen as demonstrating a desire to have sex – the
woman had consented. The question then arises, even if she did consent in the first instance, is that consent invalidated by the woman passing out or falling asleep?</p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">The answer is,
yes, the initial consent is invalidated - or is it? A jury could take the view that in consenting to sex in the first place the woman entered into an <i>agreement</i> and falling asleep or passing out did not negate that contract. Now while that seems harsh, this is one derivation of focusing on consent as the critical determinant of rape.</p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">Basing everything on consent willfully given, characterises sex as a kind of contractual arrangement and all contracts place obligations on the parties. The first of those obligations would presumably be that, after the sex has occurred, neither party will accuse each other of rape. The second would be that both parties agree to sex occurring - or perhaps that's the first one. Whatever the priority, there is a possibility that the agreement could be held to be binding even if one of the parties falls asleep or unconscious. </p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">Of course consent is not usually given in any formal legalistic way. If one party specifically voices the request "Do you want to have sex?" and the answer is "Yes," then you could say an agreement has been entered into. But, in most sexual encounters, agreement is reached by a series of coded invitations and confirmed by actions and responses. However, even in such indirect communications, a contract can be still held to be "implied" and a defense frequently used by men accused of having sex with a woman without consent is that they had an “honest belief’ that she was consenting based on her actions. This has been accepted by courts in many cases. </p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">As part of the same "honest belief" defense, claims are often made that, while consent was never explicitly given, 'she never told me to stop". This may be taken by a court to sufficient to establish an honest belief. That defense however would not play well in cases where the woman passes out because the prosecution will simply say "Well of course she didn't tell you to stop, she was unconscious." </p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">But herein lies another fundamental problem. Many people argue that the solution to ambiguity over consent is that consent must be given clearly and unambiguously and that men, as much as for their own protection as anything should make sure that they have clear and informed consent from the woman before having sex. However, what if the woman, for whatever reason, changes her mind? In that case, it must become equally essential for her to state clearly and unambiguously that she is terminating the consent. If a the man continues to have sex with her, after that clear statement of termination, then he has committed rape. But what if she lapses into unconsciousness without formally withdrawing her consent? For the man to continue having sex with her, as in Scenario 3, would clearly by clearly be immoral, distasteful and beastly. But is it technically "rape". Has he had sex with her without consent?</p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">On top of all of these technical considerations is the overarching issue of proof. The critical problem is that, as in Scenario
4, if a woman drinks enough to pass out, then her memories of events immediately
prior to that point would be likely to be impaired. If they are not actually impaired, their accuracy would be seriously questioned in court. Since the onus of proof in
a criminal trial is on the prosecution, it is up to the alleged victim to prove
that she did <i>not</i> give consent but the very fact that she was inebriated to the point of passing out raises doubts as to her capacity to remember the details of the situation and, specifically, whether she gave consent.</p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">Even the Case 1, where she
is clearly raped before she could have given any form of consent, becomes a
difficult case to prove because the only undisputed facts of the case are that sexual intercourse occurred and, at some point, she passed out. The fact that she does not remember having sex does not mean that she was not conscious, and consenting during it. Even in a scenario where the woman does not actually
“pass out” but is just very drunk - confused, perhaps dizzy, unable to stand, not
fully aware of what was going on, how can a court reconstruct whether or not there was
a moment when she clearly, and with full presence of mind, gave or denied
consent?</p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">One way of getting round these problems of
defining whether consent was ever given or withdrawn is to virtually ignore the issue and try another approach.</p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">Instead of focusing on whether there some sort of explicit or implied agreement, we could invoke the legal principle o judge the situation in terms of a Duty of Care. We could say that a
person who is engaged, or intending to engage, in sex with another person has a
duty of care towards them. This would mean that they would not attempt to have
sex with them when they were unconscious, semi-conscious, or even just heavily
inebriated <i>regardless</i> of any indication, stated or implied, of willingness to participate. In other words, the claim in Scenario 5 that,
although the victim gave consent, she had been exploited while under the influence
of alcohol, would have legal teeth.</p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">This would mean that the proposed single law, covering Coercion for the Purposes of Obtaining Sex could be accompanied by another law covering acts where sex was obtained, not by coercion but by opportunistic exploitation.</p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">Of course there are problems with imposing a Duty of Care on casual sexual encounters. It would mean requiring individuals to make a
judgement about other people’s states of mind which they may not be equipped to
make. It would also require them making decisions about other people’s welfare which, again, they might not have sufficient information to make. It is also something that might
be unreasonable to expect in the (very likely) situation where both parties are
inebriated or drunk affected and not acting responsibly to begin with. And of course, the notion of a men deciding what women "need" could be seen as patronising.</p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">The Law has never generally regarded acts committed when drunk as different from acts committed sober. Being
drunk is no defense (or should not be) to assault or murder. This is because the
state of being drunk or drug-affected is held to be something the the person in question has willfully imposed
on themselves and therefore they are responsible for any act they commit while in
that state. Traditionally, that has been extended to
things such as an inebriated woman or man consenting to sex when they might not have done
it while sober. The only time when consent is considered to be voided due to the effects of a drug is when the drug was administered by someone else, without the victim’s knowledge. </p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><o:p>However, t</o:p>he Duty of Care principle does not
seek to overturn the "right" to consent. It does not concern itself with whether drunken consent
is the same as sober consent and does not seek to decide whether a woman is responsible for the consent she gives while inebriated. It makes no judgement on the woman's actions nor her rights or autonomy. It applies entirely to the actions of the <i>other
</i>party and how they affect the alcohol or drug-affected individual.</p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">In this sense a law against Sexual Exploitation would in effect mirror the laws against Sexual
Harassment which already include a duty of care component. Sexual Harassment does not necessarily require that the offender deliberately exploit their position to obtain sexual favours. It accepts that power does not have to be explicitly wielded as a weapon; the mere fact of
someone being in a position to control someone else’s life, career, relationships, etc, can act as a form of coercion towards allowing intimacies even when no implicit or explicit threats are applied. It states that freely-given consent is not necessarily free when it is occurs on an unlevel playing field. People in positions of power or influence therefore have a duty of care not to exploit their position to gain sexual or other favours <i>even inadvertently</i>.</p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">Similarly, a
law of Sexual Exploitation would serve as a warning that even in a casual, non-institutional, non-hierarchical environment, any situation where there is a power imbalance - such as a relatively sober man and a woman who is clearly seriously inebriated - there is a duty of care, irrespective of the matter of consent, not to not take advantage of the situation. The advantage of such a change in the law would mean that it was no longer necessary for a woman to prove that she did not consent, or that she consented initially but changed her mind, or wanted to change her mind but was unable to do so. It would not be necessary to prove what state of consciousness she was in at the time. It would only be necessary to show that the respondent in the matter failed to act in her best interests.</p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><br /></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast"><br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>Ian McFadyenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15485556320535200135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759415282581131550.post-66004655034081021052021-01-09T20:18:00.004-08:002021-01-09T20:40:47.716-08:00Was Hollywood a factor in the storming of the Capitol? <p>Looking at Facebook I came across a very serious fan
discussion about Zac Snyder’s latest film with all sorts of comments evaluating his
productions comparing Man of Steel with Sucker Punch etc etc.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I’m not sure how to react to people discussing films that
are outright fantasies with such earnestness and commitment. I mean, to be
seriously comparing movies that are so fantastical as to be downright silly, how
can you even begin to discuss these except in terms of perhaps cinematography, special
effects and stunts, for that’s all they really have.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">To begin with, let’s clarify the difference between fiction
and fantasy. It’s not a hard edged distinction but, in general terms, fiction
means a narrative with imaginary versions of real people. The characters are
fictitious but the types of people they represent do exist. Hence, the staple characters
of Hollywood movies, cowboys, detectives, gangsters, soldiers, bank robbers, aspiring
singers, doctors and so on are types of people who actually exist. Similarly
the worlds in which they exist are comparable to ones that do exist, or have
existed, in reality. That is not so say that those worlds are represented with
documentary accuracy but that the general intention is to portray a modern city,
the African jungle, or ancient Rome as, to the best of our knowledge, we imagine
them in real life.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Fantasy, on the other hand, invokes elements that do not
exist nor have ever existed. There appear to be two main fantasy modes. One is
where fantasy characters inhabit realistic environments such as wizards living
in modern London, superheroes flying around Los Angeles or zombies stalking
small towns. Those fantasy characters also include bizarre villains such as
deformed criminal masterminds with exotic names. The second is where realistic people
are placed in fantasy environments e.g. astronauts exploring other planets or children
passing through a wardrobe to find themselves in a mythical land. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Of course, there are fantasies where the both the characters
and the environment are imaginary such as <i>Star Wars</i> and <i>Lord of the Rings</i>. In
these, the authors have created an entire imaginary universe. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Sometimes these fantasies are called ‘science fiction’ but this
is incorrect. Real science fiction speculates on the implications of actual scientific
discoveries. The great science fiction writers imagined and often correctly
predicted, future technologies such as space flight, submarines and so on. Often,
as with the Invisible Man, or Forbidden Planet, they considered the social and
moral implications of advanced technology.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Science fantasy, on the other hand, simply uses scientific
concepts to justify what are really just magical events. In these stories, the
characters have access to an array of “black box” implements like the famous “flux
capacitor” (an intentional satire) in <i>Back to the Future. </i>The underlying
technology of these things is never explained but they are required to make the
story work. Hence astronauts are able to fly faster than light by flicking a
switch to ‘hyperdrive’, or travel to another galaxy in minutes by going through
a “wormhole” and, in <i>Independence Day</i> a<i> </i>scientist disables a
massive alien spaceship by uploading a virus from his laptop. In other words,
the “science” in these stories is not futuristic speculation, it is just a
modern version of the <i>deus ex machina.<o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But, getting back to Zac Snyder, the troubling thing about
Hollywood is that over the last 25 years, the top-end output of the American
film industry – which is to say, the so called “tent-pole” big budget, big
audience movies - has been completely dominated by fantasy.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Some of those fantasies have been franchises built, parasitically,
on successful originals such as <i>Alien </i>and <i>Star Wars</i>.
Others have been derived from British works such as <i>Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit
</i>and <i>Harry Potter. </i>So successful have these productions been that studios
have rushed to adapt other fantasy authors’ works but not all of these worked: <i>The
Golden Compass, </i>and <i>Mortal Engines </i>were flops.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The richest source of fantasy has been, however, comic
books. Faced with a shortage of literate fantasy in America, the studios turned
to <i>illiterate</i> fantasy – wildly fantastic stories illustrated in
pictorial form for Americans who struggle with print. The Marvel Universe and
the DC franchises have driven theatrical releases for almost twenty years now.
So dependent are the studios on comic books that they have remade superhero
movies that were less than ten years old to make them seem new. And like the
comic themselves, they have sought to prolong the life of character franchises
by combining then into ensemble movies with multiple superheroes.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Comic book fantasies however are significantly different
from other fantasies. Firstly the characters were all originally designed, and
continue to be designed in the movie versions, to cater to male fantasies and
male feelings of inadequacy. Their original target audience was, and remains, male
adolescents. (bear in mind that adolescence can now extend into the 30s) Even
the female superheroes, with their exaggerated builds and tight costumes are male
fantasies. The movie makers attempt to disguise the fact the women characters
are just centrefolds in Spandex by endowing them some sort of feminist qualities,
but this is just cynical appropriation. Has anyone noticed how similar Wonder
Woman’s costume is to the Playboy Bunny’s outfit?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The other issue with these fantasies is that the universes
they inhabit are incoherent. Unlike the fantasy worlds of <i>Lord of the Rings,
Narnia </i>and <i>Star Wars, </i>where the writers have constructed a universe
with its own rules, history, geography, races, politics and culture, the Marvel
Universe was cobbled together to bring a series of characters that were
originally living in separate worlds, into a shared world. As a result, nothing in
this “universe” makes sense. Thor, a character from Nordic mythology who lives
in Valhalla, somehow co-exists with mutated humans such as The Hulk, technologized
humans (Iron Man), vampires (Blade) and psychics (Black Widow). As more and
more characters from the vast range of Marvel comics are included, the MCU
(Marvel Cinematic Universe) makes less and less sense to the degree that they now
have no choice but to call it a “multiverse” containing a set of subsidiary “universes”
which in turn contain the multiplicity of competing “teams” such as Avengers,
X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Agents of SHIELD.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There is no overall structure to this multiverse nor in any of the sub-universes it comprises. There are no common rules, laws or
culture, no explanation of their origins other than the fact that the company came up
with all these different but, somehow, similar superhero creations.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There is no sense of actual community amongst the
characters in these comic book tales, only a kind of tense camaraderie and sometimes a common origin
like being raised together. Whatever their common experience however, the
uniqueness of their superpowers, keeps them apart. The whole comic book cosmos
is made up of individuals who socially alienated. They are either outcasts, such
as mutants rejected by society or people with special powers who must keep
their hero identities secret. Others are powerful but disaffected loners like Tony
Stark and Bruce Wayne who reinvent themselves as vigilantes battling against an
evil world. This population of alienated, angry and differently-abled individuals
come together in loose, leaderless, coalitions to vent their anger and defend
the world, through violence, from the evildoers which threaten it, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Now, does that not remind you of the mob that attacked the
Capital Building on January 6th?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But wait, you say, are you saying that watching Marvel
movies turned these people into violent protestors?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Well…. yes! But not just Marvel movies. When you look at the
whole range of Hollywood movies on offer at the cinema, on Netflix, Amazon etc. the
prevalence of fantasy, and in particular, violent fantasy is overwhelming. Hollywood
movies are dominated by a set of genres characterised by pessimism, violence
and irrationality. There is a massive number of movies set in an apocalyptic
future where either the world is dying, or has died, and people are either
surviving in the ruins or trying to escape on spaceships. Note this bears no
relation to the kind of space exploration series like <i>Star Trek</i> which
belongs in an optimistic future<i>. </i>This genre includes movies where the
world as been taken over by zombies, vampires and other aliens. They are basically
end of the world fantasies and the underlying theme is <i>survival.<o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There is another vast genre which can be described as Revenge
Fantasies. In this, a father or husband has to rescue his daughter or wife from
criminals, terrorists or some other bunch of bad guys. (It’s more exciting if
he has to fight a whole gang.) Luckily, the father or husband always turns out
to be a cop or ex-CIA assassin. (Boy did they tangle with the wrong guy.
Ladies, if you want to feel safe, marry a former professional killer.) There is
also a female equivalent – again masquerading under some sort of feminist banner
– where a woman is assaulted and takes her revenge with a 9mm automatic. What
all these stories have in common is a private citizen dispensing rough justice because
the authorities won’t or can’t act against the villains.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A third genre takes this further. In it, the villains <i>are
</i>the government. Typically, a mysterious death leads to a massive conspiracy
at the top levels of the government, the military-industrial complex, the oil
industry or energy companies - almost any corporate body will do. Hollywood has
been portraying big business as intrinsically evil for decades.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So, right there we have a series of themes that fuel
feelings of paranoia and mistrust. The world is in trouble; we’re heading for
destruction; the whole administration in Washington is corrupt and is not only
not tacking the problems, it’s causing them; we cannot trust or rely on the
police or even the army as they are all controlled by the government, the mob
or the CIA which has conspiratorial sub-groups in it – CIAs <i>inside</i> the
CIA. The salvation of the world lies with us citizens, brave individuals who will
take up arms and stand up to the conspirators and criminals. Otherwise we will
not survive.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Again you say, but these are just movies. People <i>know</i>
they are just movies. No one takes them seriously.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But they do. And that takes me back to how seriously people
discuss movies by fantasists like Tarantino, Snyder and Marvel.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It is apparent from reading fan comments that although these
movies which are simply just dumb, formulaic, action packed macho fantasies,
that many Americans think they deal with <i>serious themes. </i>And when you
look at the violent Trump supporters, the correlation between their beliefs –
the world is in danger, the government is evil, there is a conspiracy to enslave
and the answer is guns or other weapons <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>–
and the texts of Hollywood movies is to strong to be mere coincidence.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The question is whether Hollywood is the cause, or just a
reflection of these mind-sets.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The answer is that it is a cycle. There is a feedback loop
between Hollywood and audiences, a feedback loop that operates through both
ticket sales and direct research. The studios make a picture that people go to
so they make another one just like it. But they push it a bit further. If the
audience likes a hero with a big gun, maybe they’ll like a hero with a bigger
gun. If they like a movie where the villain is the town mayor, maybe we should
try one where he’s a governor. What if he’s a Senator? Or how about the President
himself? Sometimes they go too far and have to pull back but, if so, it’s only
temporary. When <i>Texas Chainsaw Massacre </i>was released in 1974, it was
banned in Australia and many other places. Today it is regarded as a mild
splatter movie and we in Australia make movies just as violent. The first revenge
movie was probably <i>Death Wish</i> (also 1974) with Charles Bronson. It was
also too violent for many people. Today, Revenge is a whole genre led mostly by
Liam Neeson.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The escalation and acceptance of violence in movies (to the
point where a movie about a psychopath who skins women and another psychopath
who eats people won an Academy Award) can only be explained by a reciprocal
change in audience’s reactions and tastes. It is not just a matter of desensitization
as some people describe it, but a gradual increase in the excitement at
seeing violent situations and the desire to see even more action and more violence.
Even children’s cartoons, formerly harmless and conflict free, were taken over
by violent Japanese cartoons about superheroes and villains in the Eighties<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The books people read, the songs they listen to and movies
they watch are pretty good indicators of the psychological state of the
population. Different countries produce different types of movies which is one
of the ways we know there are different cultures across the world. Only perhaps
China, with its graphic historical epics and kung fu films, has produced movies
as violent as America<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The other important thing about the love and acceptance of
fantasy films is the issue of <u>logic</u>.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">To have an intelligent population, people have not only to be
educated, they have to be able to think logically. They have to not only understand
logic but <i>respect</i> logic, to know how important logic is to a functioning
society. One of the results of the scientific revolution of the 1800s was the
advent of the detective novel. The detective genre was unknown before the late
19<sup>th</sup> century but was established by the appearance of characters
such as Sherlock Holmes who used logic and science to solve crimes. That genre has continued
for over a hundred years in the books of Agatha Christie and other detective stories. Many
people watch detective books and TV show because they like trying to work out the
solution. They also like doing cryptic crosswords and Sudoku puzzles. And this
is a good thing: the more interested people are in logic, the less likely they
are to believe absurd theories and rumours.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So it is not a bad thing for people to get annoyed when movies
are illogical. (I'm defending myself here, as a chronic mistake pointer-outer) We all know that we are supposed to suspend disbelief when we
watch fictional creations but with many American movies, belief is not being
suspended, it is being hung, drawn and quartered. If the job of the movie maker
is to tell a story, it is not only justifiable, but a responsibility to point
out when the story doesn’t make sense. Yet, a lot of movie goers seem to accept
glaring anomalies in stories. Why is this? I believe the reason many movie goers
overlook glaring logical problems in movies today is not because they are
suspending disbelief, but because they simply don’t <i>see </i>the logical
errors. That is a completely different situation.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">All this dovetails with the reality of millions of Americans
sincerely believing the 2020 election was rigged, and that vaccines are designed
for mind control, that 5G phone tours cause Covid and other beliefs too
irrational to even describe.<br />
<br />
Can movies that extol the value of intelligence ever overcome the attraction of
the mindless movies of Marvel and Christopher Nolan? Probably not. Firstly,
because movies about smart people – <i>Imitation Game, Hidden Figures </i>and
so on – depict intelligence as belonging only to a people with rare freakish, <i>savant,
</i>abilities. Intelligence is not a quality you expect to find in the average
citizen. Looks are far more important. Also, because intelligence leads to
questioning and analysis, then doubt, and possibly denunciation, derision and
denial, it is not something that advertisers, merchandisers, political parties,
religious groups, conspiracy theorists, doomsday cults and the entertainment industry
want to encourage. It could put them out of business. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>Ian McFadyenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15485556320535200135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759415282581131550.post-72898410139225477812020-06-27T19:40:00.002-07:002021-05-31T04:44:22.734-07:00Dark World: The Rise of the Millennials<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;">It has come as a shock
that, even as the COVID 19 epidemic is still in progress, demonstrations and riots
about issues unrelated to the epidemic itself would break out all over the world. At
a time when individuals are still being urged to isolate themselves, there have
been waves of demonstrations, riots, protests, assaults and destruction of
property. The trigger for these events was, in the first instance, the killing
of an unarmed man by Minneapolis police but the protests have gone far beyond
the issue of police brutality and racism to matters such as indigenous rights, historical
racism, colonialism and imperialism. The marches and demonstrations have also
been infiltrated and to a great extent captured by opportunistic Marxists and anarchists
which has escalated what were intended to be peaceful protests into violent
clashes.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">Racism has been, and
continues to be, a problem in the United States and the radical political groups who have exploited the death of Floyd, have been around for decades but what
accounts for such a massive conflation of issues, and the level of anger and violence
in these protests during an unrelated national emergency? And why have these events
spread to other countries such as France, Britain and Australia?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">In answering this question
we must first recall that, even before the COVID epidemic, there were rolling
demonstrations regarding climate change and other issues on an almost daily basis
in Australian cities. Additional outrage over the George Floyd homicide – so graphically
recorded on video - plus the social disruption of the epidemic, provide part of
the explanation for this explosion of anger. But there’s something else.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">What we have just seen is
the first mass manifestation of attitudes, beliefs and possibly the power, of the
Millennial Generation.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">There are very few times
in history when a specific group of young people can be defined as a “generation”.
Generations were always something that were counted within families, not right across
societies. Perhaps the first named generation was the Lost Generation,
referring to the people who went through the First World War. Most famous is
the generation called the “Baby Boomers” who were the children born in the years
after World War 2. There have been attempts to define subsequent generations
such as Gen X and Gen Y but these categories are unconvincing because they do
not demonstrate a clear commonality in either time of birth or culture. The
Millennials, however, people who have grown up in the 21<sup>st</sup> century,
do constitute a definable generation because what creates a generation is not just
being born around the same time but the kind of world that they grow up in.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">The Baby Boomers were a
distinct group because they grew up in a world that was culturally and technologically
very different from that of their parents. They were the first generation that
grew up with television, in some cases from infancy. They were the first generation
to be called “teenagers”, a demographic category invented by the business world
to sell youth-oriented products. They were thus the first generation of people
between physical maturity (puberty) and social maturity (adulthood) to have music,
movies and fashion designed just for them. The advent of plastics and
electronics led youth-oriented products such as transistor radios, portable
record players and cheap 7” records which in turn led to a huge industry in music
aimed at teenagers. Around that time, radios also became standard equipment in
cars which, added to emergence of drive-in theatres, and the fact that US
teenagers could get their licences at 16 afforded unprecedented freedom, and
privacy, to people who were no-longer children but not yet recognised as adults.
Plastics also enabled the creation of such things as light-weight surfboards
which led to surfing and beach culture - the Beach Boys were an unforeseen by-product
of fibre-glass Running through all this, was the constant reaffirming that young
people were members of a new generation, a generation which was destined to be,
and in fact already was, different from their parents.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">That sense of being different
was enhanced by another critical factor. More Boomers completed High School and
went onto college and university that any previous generation. Boomers were very
often the first members of their family to go on to Tertiary education. This,
of course, enhanced their sense of being different from previous generations
even more. Now, having three years of social studies, psychology, politics or
literature under their belts, they felt intellectually superior to the parents.
They also felt intellectually superior to people in government, people in business,
in fact just about all authority figures. The problems in the world were not
due to historical forces or necessity, they were due to the ignorance, narrow-mindedness,
racism, sexism, intolerance, chauvinism, commercialism, militarism, prejudices
and contempt for the environment of the older generation. The Boomers of
course, under the guidance of a select view of enlightened older people, were
going to change all this. It was going to be the Age of Aquarius.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">In this way the children
of the Baby Boom created flow-on booms in several sectors of society including
the music, fashion, and education industries, as well as, unfortunately, drugs.
Part of the cultural differentiation between Boomers and their parents was in
the attitude to drug-taking. To parents, drug taking (as distinct from alcohol
and nicotine consumption) was the lowest form of activity. Boomers however were
led to believe, again by older Influencers (I'm looking at you Cheech & Chong), that a dope-smoking world would be
a more peaceful one and that psychotropic drugs such as LSD and mescaline were
doorways to enlightenment. This led to significant social problems at the time which
have increased over time. It is worth noting that the drug cartels of Mexico
and Colombia, which are more powerful than the governments of their countries,
were created and financed almost entirely by middle-class Americans buying marijuana
and cocaine.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">Now let’s consider the Millennials.
Just as many Boomers never knew a time without television, Millennials have never
known a time without the Internet. They have no concept of what life could have
been like before the Web, email, mobile phones, tablets and social media. Many
Millennials have never read a newspaper, and few of them now even watch
television, which raises serious questions about how they get their news. Like
the Boomers they have been consumers of goods and services aimed specifically at
their generation. The stand-out of course is the phone itself, which to older people
was a way of talking to someone, but due to the ministrations and, one might
say, machinations, of people like Steve Jobs, has become a machine for the portable
consumption of entertainment. It allows people to access entertainment in almost any situation, 24 hours a day. Phones are now as important to the modern
teenager as the car was to the Baby Boomers as a facilitator of social
interaction. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">There is still a large music industry targeting young people though it is now compromised by the vast inventory of popular music that has accumulated since the
Fifties. It is not unusual, remarkably, for Millennials to listen to Elton John
and Queen – music that is 30 or 40 years old. That is the equivalent of
teenagers in the Sixties listening to jazz bands from the 1920’s – a highly unlikely
scenario. Commercial products and services aimed at Millennials include PC
games, consoles and console games, social media apps
and a burgeoning number online services which allow people to become personal
broadcasters. We must also include the burgeoning industry of medical and psychological
services aimed at young people. Millennials are more likely to be consuming
medication than any previous generation. While Boomers may have believed in the
benefits of cannabis, Millennials rely to a disturbing degree on anti-depressant,
anti-ADD and anti-anxiety medications, often from a very young age, despite the fact that they have less to be
depressed or anxious about that any previous generation of people. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">This leads naturally to considering
the differences between Boomers and Millennials. The most obvious difference
between them is that the Boomer generation was infused with an optimism about the
future, albeit often misplaced. There was general prosperity in the world in
the Sixties, and people graduating from college in the Seventies had a pretty good
chance of getting a job. The Age of Aquarius never really came about,
except for the few hippies who moved to the hills and built mud-brick homes but Boomers have generally done well financially. The culture of the Millennials on
the other hand is utterly pessimistic. They have absorbed all the apocalyptic
theories of the environmentalists, and climate-change alarmists and anti-capitalists.
They are horrified by what they see as entrenched racism, xenophobia and
environmental neglect in Western Society and despair for its future. This, at first
sight, seems odd since they are the most nurtured generation in history. They
have gone through school with smaller class sizes, more individually-tailored
teaching and extra support staff than any previous students and have also been
spared many of the strictures of previous educational regimes such as corporal punishment,
compulsory competitive sport, even written exams. Could this nurturance itself have led to heightened anxiety and pessimism?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">Despite living in quite
different technological and psychological eras, what Millennials and Boomers share
is a sense of being special and important. Just as the Baby Boomers were made
to feel special by having fashions and music made just for them, and people
telling them they were smarter and better than their parents, the very nurturance
experienced by the Millennials - the helicopter parenting, psychological hypochondriasis,
over-diagnosis of conditions such as autism and similar conditions, removal of anything
potentially disturbing from education materials - and a resulting trend of narcissism
that sees people take more pictures of themselves than anything else - has
imbued the Millennials with a sense of their own cosmic importance. Nothing
demonstrates this more than the sight of an entirely unspecial Swedish teenager addressing the
United Nations and upbraiding the older generation for destroying her life and
her future.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">The difference between
Boomers and Millennials thus comes down to this: the Boomers regarded themselves
as victors. The Millennials both see themselves as, and identify with other
people who see themselves as, victims.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">This year, children born
in 2001, the first true Millennials, turn 19. They are now in the last
year of their teenagerhood and will be entering the workforce over the next few
years. In twenty years time they will be reaching positions in management and
will be making important decisions.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">We are now coping with the fact that many people
in senior positions in society are the children of the Sixties who still carry inside much
of the utopian/Aquarian baggage of that era –mistrust of authority, capitalism
and even Western culture in general. What kind of world will
be built by a people who get all their information from the Internet, have been
in counselling since they were 12, whose photo collections consist of nothing but
selfies, and have never read a book written before 1997? Will they have the
ability to fix and reunify the fragmented world created by the Boomers, or will
they sleepwalk down the road of good intentions into a dark world of
self-defeating rage, intolerance and ideological totalitarianism?</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>Ian McFadyenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15485556320535200135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759415282581131550.post-5673731575142827732020-01-10T19:48:00.002-08:002020-01-10T19:50:37.163-08:00Despicable MeOver the last few years there has been an increasing number
of essays and books decrying the way humans regard themselves as the only
species that matter and are destroying nature for their own selfish gain.<br />
<br />
I’m here to admit that this is true, and I’m the one doing
it.<br />
<br />
Yes, I am the evil mastermind who is despoiling the planet for
the sake of my own comfort. For you see, I am a human. I like to eat meals, have
a roof over my head, read books, watch movies and have a phone and a computer
and machines to heat and cool both my food and my house. I like to have a car,
to be able to fly in planes and watch movies. I want to feel safe in my own
home and to know that if I am sick I can go to a hospital. That’s my evil plan and
in order to carry it out, unfortunately I have to plunder nature.<br />
<br />
Of course I can’t do it alone which is why I have Minions – millions
of them stationed around the world. Every day my Minions are busy mining iron,
copper and aluminium. They’re cutting down trees, fishing in oceans, digging up
limestone, drilling for oil and pumping gas and water along incredibly long pipelines.
They are digging up coal and burning it in boilers to power my lights, refrigerator,
computer, and television as well as all the trains, trams, hospitals, elevators
and shopping centres that I love. And my minions are not just dumb labourers.
They’re smart. They have taken wild oxen and bred them into cows that produce megalitres
of milk, and tonnes of lean meat. They’re changed wild sheep into walking
clouds of wool that make my blankets. They’ve genetically altered wild grains
to make crops that yield tonnes of food – enough to feed the whole world. Of
course this involves clearing land, damming rivers and so on but that’s all right with me. Nature does not give
up its bounty willingly. It has no interest in our welfare and never has. My Despicable Ancestors lived their lives in fear of being eaten. They weren’t apex
predators. They spent their time building walls to keep out wolves, bears,
lions, leopards and sabre-tooth tigers that regarded them as Paleolithic Take-away. They realised that to survive they had to fight nature and win, and
they did. They eventually managed to pretty much eradicate these predators from Europe. Then they cut down the vast forests that housed those threats, and turned them into productive farmland. Of course, today we are still not at the top of the food chain because
we are preyed on by bacteria. However, thanks to the ongoing work of my loyal
minions (Microbiology Division) we all have a good chance of living into our
seventies which was unimaginable only a few centuries ago so - Go Minions!<br />
<br />
Of course the Heroes who want to defend Nature hate me and
my Minions and are sworn to destroy us. But they will never succeed. Their attempts are laughable. Are they able to offer us anything as nice as an electric blanket on a cold night or a crisp ice-berg lettuce (not that dreadful limp rocket)? And if I and my Minions can
eradicate sabre-tooths, bubonic plague, smallpox and tooth decay we have no fear of them.
But here’s the funny thing: the Ecowarriors who have dubbed me "Despicable" are
doing all the same thing I and my Minions do. They too live in dwellings,
eat food, ride in motorised transport, wear clothes, use mobile phones and publish
their attacks in printed books. So are they not just as despicable as I? <br />
<br />
It’s puzzling to me why anyone should wish to abandon all the wonderful things my Minions have created, but I bear them no ill will. If they really
wish to have no part of my evil plan to rule the worlds, I have a
solution. My Minions are presently creating a resort – an island where Ecowarriors can live in
harmony with nature. It’s called Pliocene Park and it replicates the Earth as
it was 5 million years ago before the planet was despoiled by human hands. I am
willing to send any of my critics there to live, free of charge. There they
will be able to enjoy a pre-human paradise complete with forests, fresh running
streams, nuts, berries, butterflies, anopheles mosquitoes, wolves and bears. We've even included a couple of sabre-tooths. Bookings will open soon.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Ian McFadyenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15485556320535200135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759415282581131550.post-41587356251131391542018-05-15T19:19:00.002-07:002018-05-15T19:19:24.972-07:00It's time to abolish the crime of rape
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
Recently, the Four Corners program on the ABC documented the
case of a young woman called Saxon Mullins and the man Luke Lazarus who was
convicted of raping her and then had his conviction overturned by on appeal on
the grounds that he genuinely believed she was consenting to intercourse.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
This case highlights the problem with our rape laws as they
currently stand.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
First of all let me say that the Appeal Court judge erred by exonerating the accused in this case. If the court had applied the
“reasonable man” test, Lazarus’s conviction would have stood. The “reasonable
man” test is a criterion often imposed in legal deliberations based on how a
reasonable person might be expected to act in a given circumstance. In this case,
although Mullins admitted she did not clearly and forcefully tell Lazarus to
stop, or could not recalling doing so, no reasonable person would have expected an 18 year
old woman who has never had sex, to want her first sexual experience to be on
her hands and knees in a filthy back alley being anally penetrated by a man she
had just met.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
There is also the fact that Mullins admitted she had
consumed a fair number of drinks which suggests her ability to consent or to maintain
control of the situation was very likely to have been impaired. That is something that Lazarus also should have understood. Again, a reasonable man should have realised that, even
if she gave consent or appeared to be passively allowing intercourse to take
place, because she had been drinking, her judgement was likely to be impaired.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
The appeal court’s decision in this case seems to relieve
the alleged rapist on any responsibility for ascertaining the state of mind of
the alleged victim or indeed having any due care for her overall welfare. Indeed there is very little clarity in Law as to what the
responsibilities of the man are (I am speaking of men having sex with women but
the discussion applies to any combination of sexes) in relation to determining
the state of mind of or the potential consequences for, the woman. For example does the man have to be convinced beyond
a reasonable doubt that the woman is consenting, or can he just make a decision on the balance of
probabilities. And how scrupulous is he supposed to be in making sure her
consent is not only informed but is not emanating from some state of impaired
judgement?</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
Furthermore, does the man have a responsibility for the welfare of the woman beyond the immediate situation? In the classical interpretation
of the crime of rape, apparently not. To put it crudely, the traditional rule
is if she allows it to happen, then it’s her fault, she bears the consequences.”
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
The problem is the crime of<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>rape is a binary concept. An act
is either rape or not rape depending on whether there was consent or not consent. But the idea of consent itself is essentially an artefact of the legal
system. It fails to reflect the actual complexity and subtleties of sexual
encounters. Because a judge or a jury has to find the defendant guilty or not
guilty – which is a binary decision – the basis for that judgement, which is
consent, has also been configured as a binary concept.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
But consent cannot be considered as a simple matter of yes
or no because it can be obtained in so many different ways. Consent can be
obtained through promises, payment, fear,
fraud or the deliberate impairment of judgement. Threatening someone with a gun or a knife can clearly
elicit consent. Intercourse with someone who is unconscious or disoriented by
drugs or alcohol to the extent that they are not aware of what is happening is also
not consensual and situations where a woman has sex with a man
thinking he is someone else also negates consent. So even under the traditional
tests, consent alone does not legitimise intercourse.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
But those invalidations do not go far enough. Explicit
threats of violence or a visible weapon are not required to induce fear.
Fear can arise purely from the circumstances, from perceived or imagined
threats. It can arise from a psychological condition in the woman herself. That
fear might be unreasonable or unjustified but it still negates her consent.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
If a court is prepared to give weight to the man’s subjective
assessment of whether the woman is consenting, surely the woman’s subjective
assessment of whether she is at risk must also be taken seriously.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
To qualify all this let me explain that, in the late Sixties,
I was part of team of researchers at Melbourne University who conducted a
post-graduate study into the crime of rape. It was, at the time, one of the few
studies and ever done on the subject and certainly the most comprehensive study
done up to that time. One of the key findings of that study was that the
traditional definition of rape as being intercourse without consent was
inadequate and a recommendation was made that the crime itself would be better
abolished.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
It was clear to us that, rather than a binary definition of
rape/not rape, there was a gradation between willing consensual sexual
intercourse and forcible sexual intercourse with violence or death threats. Between those
opposites lay a range of interactions and somewhere
along that line was a point where those interactions changed from acceptable to
unacceptable. It was the point where means of obtaining sex turned from
legitimate to illegitimate: where courtship became coercion, where seduction became harassment and inducement
became entrapment.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
The suggestion of our report was that the crime of rape be replaced by a stature dealing with sexual
imposition or sexual coercion. Fifty years later, partly because of the campaign against sexual
harassment, that idea is finally starting to gain traction.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
Traditionally the role of coercion has not carried sufficient
weight because there was a notion that women should resist rape even to the
point of dying rather than submitting to it. A woman who did not fight to the
death was thought of as having placed her life before her honour. That is not
so far from the situation in some countries where women are still imprisoned for
being raped but it is worth remembering that shades of that existed in
Australia as recently as about fifty years ago.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
A reformed code of sexual violations would widen the concept
of unlawful sexual acts to include any situation where the ability of a person
to make choices that are free, informed and beneficial to themselves is impaired.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
It would also impose clear responsibility on anyone instigating
a sexual encounter to make all reasonable efforts to ensure the encounter was the
result of an informed, uncoerced decision by the other party and further that there
be no detrimental consequences for that other person. Furthermore it would define
a criterion for establishing consent which would not be simply on the balance
of probabilities but that which is used for criminal trials themselves – beyond
a reasonable doubt.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
There are many situations where consent is not so much invalidated as irrelevant. For example, a situation that people I know have experienced: a man offers to drive a woman home but instead drives her to a remote
location far out of town. She is given the choice of having sex or getting
out of the car. Historically, if the woman agrees to sex, the man is not guilty
of rape because he made no physical threats and the woman did have the option
of leaving. He is however guilty of creating a situation where, if the woman
does agree to have sex, or allow him to have sex with her, she is consenting to
an act that she would not have otherwise consented to. That is the key element
of coercion. In that situation, a court would traditionally have focussed on
the decision that she made and decided she made a free and informed choice to
have sex rather than walk twenty miles home. However that would be to focus on
the wrong issue. The issue is not what the woman decided: it is that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">she should not have been forced to make a
decision at all. </i></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
(Incidentally, it is surprising to me that Lazarus was not
charged with abduction since he told Mullins he was taking her to the “VIP”
room of the nightclub but actually took her out to the back alley. Lying to her
about where they were going makes it technically an abduction. It also goes to
establishing his intentions since that lie was clearly the first step towards engineering
a sexual encounter.)</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
Another case that is all too familiar is the situation where
a woman finds herself compelled to have sex with a man just to get him to
leave, or let her sleep. A man keeps a woman up all night till she is exhausted,
or won’t go home until the woman gives in and consents to sex. This is in fact
the literal meaning of harassment – to harry someone to the point of
exhaustion.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
The fact is that woman can be coerced, blackmailed or tricked into having sex in a
number of ways that violate their autonomy but don’t technically qualify as
rape or even assault. They take the form of fraud, blackmail, extortion, beleaguerment, psychological manipulation and various forms of domination.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
Domination, which appears to be the key factor in the Lazarus case, is one of the most common and most dangerous forms of sexual coercion or bullying but also the most likely <i>not</i> to be acknowledged as a form of coercion because of a long-standing notion that women find it erotic. Domination is the situation where the man does not become aggressive or threatening but becomes "masterful" giving orders and exerting control over the woman. Women, especially young women, are likely to find themselves with the man's instructions not because they are impressed by his masterfulness but because they simply don't know how to deal with the situation and regain their autonomy.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
The main argument for replacing the crime of rape with general, graduated, crime of sexual coercion is that the acts which constitute sexual imposition - that is: extortion, blackmail, bullying, harassment, deception etc - are already illegal in other fields of human endeavour.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
Many of the means that men use to obtain sex
from women are methods that would invalidate, for example, a sales contract. A
contract for the purchase of goods that was signed under duress, because of
exhaustion, or fear, or false promises would be quickly invalidated by a court. But, oddly, the same scrutiny is not applied to agreements for sexual activity.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
The point is that the criminality in a sexual assault or any
other sex crime does not reside in the sex itself. The illegality lies in the
means that used to bring the act about. We accept that you cannot obtain goods
or money by deception, by coercion, by blackmail or by forcing people to make instant
decisions. That’s why we have cooling-off periods for all major purchases such
as houses and cars. The law recognises
that people can be confused by sales pitches and will commit to detrimental financial
deals that they later regret. In other words the law is prepared to protect us from our own decisions, even ones we made freely, or thought we were making freely, at the time.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
Without wishing to trivialise of the Mullins/Lazarus case,
imagine that, instead of it being about a woman having sex with a man in an alley,
that Lazarus was a car salesman who had sold Saxon Mullins a car she didn’t want for an exorbitant price.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Any court would
have annulled the sales contract saying, firstly, she was too young to enter
into such a contract, that in any case it clearly wasn’t the sort of car she wanted and
that he had taken advantage of her youth, inexperience and vulnerability to
sell her a car which was basically junk. His defence that he “sincerely believed
she wanted that car” would fall on deaf hears and he would be fined and
probably lose his dealer’s licence.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
Surely a young woman’s dignity is more important than a car.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Ian McFadyenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15485556320535200135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759415282581131550.post-5196931963973128862018-05-01T15:53:00.001-07:002018-05-01T15:53:22.871-07:00Paintings vs Painters
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
A couple of days ago a French museum in the south of France,
dedicated to the work of painter Etienne Terrus, discovered that more than half
the works in the museum were fakes. This was described by curators as a “catastrophe.”</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
But here’s the thing.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
It’s most likely that, unless there was an entire Terrus-faking
cottage industry in the Pyrenees, most of the 82 fake paintings were painted by
the same person. Now, we don’t know who the faker was but let’s call him Benny.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
Now, if Benny was not as good a painter as Terrus, the
question arises as to why the curators did not pick up that half the collection
was not as good as the other half. Did they assume that, like most painters, Terrus
had good days and bad days. But if that was their assumption, why hang paintings
that were not the best examples of the painter’s work, let alone make up half
the collection out of them.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
My belief would be, however, that the curators were fooled
into acquiring these paintings because they were exactly the same standard of
painting as Terrus’ work. And that raises the question: if Benny is just as
good a painter as Terrus, why aren’t his or her paintings just as valuable, just as
significant, just as worthy of being displayed.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
A few years ago there was an art scandal in Sydney where
someone bought a large painting alleged to be painted by Brett Whitely. It was
later shown to be fake. Again, here’s the thing. If you like the kinds of
paintings Brett Whitely did and would like to have one, and you find a painting that is like a Brett Whitely
painting, so close to his style that art aficionados think it could have been painted by Brett Whitely painting, then surely your wish has been granted. Surely a painting that looks just like a Brett Whitely is as good as a
real Brett Whitely if that's what you want to look at. If you insist that the painting not only look like a Brett
Whitely but have been actually painted by Brett Whitely, you’re not really interested
in the painting itself, you just want the name.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
My advice to the curators of the Terrus museum would be:
if half your collection of wonderful paintings was not done by Etienne Terrus but by an unknown artist I have dubbed "Benny" find out who that artist is and rename the museum the Musee de Terrus-Benny and let it honour two artists who are clearly equally good.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<br /></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Ian McFadyenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15485556320535200135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759415282581131550.post-57027512513117804932017-08-14T22:10:00.000-07:002017-08-14T22:15:34.635-07:00Nine responses to bigots who oppose same sex marriage.<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">Here are nine responses you can make to people who say they oppose Same Sex Marriage.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Marriage
is by definition between a man and a woman.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Wrong.
That is not the “definition” of marriage. The word <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">marriage </i>simply means “joining together.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s like saying the definition of alcohol
is “a beverage that cannot be sold to anyone under 18 years of age.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
definition of alcohol is a beverage that contains ethanol. “Between a man and a
woman” is a local limitation placed on marriage just like the age restriction
is a limitation placed on alcohol. It’s not the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">definition.<br />
<br />
</i>This is demonstrated that, just as the age you can legally drink changes from place to place,
many countries recognise Same Sex marriage as the same as Male-Female
marriage, so the “between a man and a woman” condition is clearly a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">local </i>issue.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">“I
don’t mind same sex couple living together but it shouldn’t be called a ‘marriage’.
Give it another name.”<br />
<br />
This is pretty much the same as saying, “I don’t mind a bunch of women going
out onto an oval with stumps, a bat and a ball and bowling the bowl and hitting
it with the bat and scoring runs but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">don’t
call it ‘cricket’. </i>Cricket is a game played by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">men.”<br />
<br />
</i>Things should be called by their proper names. Cricket is cricket and
marriage is marriage.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Legalising
Same Sex Marriage will change our societies forever.<br />
<br />
Yes, for the better.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Legalising
Same Sex Marriage will change our societies for the worse.<br />
<br />
Firstly, “legalising” is not a good word. Same Sex Marriage is
not currently <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">illegal. </i>It is perfectly
legal for Same Sex couples to live in marriage-type relationships.<br />
<br />
Secondly, those marriage-type relationships ARE currently recognised as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">legal marriages </i>by a many government and
private organisations. Centrelink, the ATO, the Family Court<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>and courts in general will recognise
those relationships as <i>de facto
marriages </i>and treat the partners accordingly<i>.<br />
</i>
“Ahh,” says the homophobe, “But de fact marriages are not real marriages.”<br />
<br />
Yes, they ARE. That why they include the word “marriage”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Saying a de facto marriage is not a marriage is </span>like saying a yellow car isn’t a
real car. Yes, it is a real car, it’s a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">yellow
</i>car.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">“Why
should a small minority of people (meaning gays) tell us what to do?”<br />
<br />
The gay community is not trying to tell others what to do. They are not trying to place restrictions on Male Female relationships, so why
are people trying to place restrictions on gay relationships? They only want to be able to do what everyone else is doing.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">“The
people have a right to be consulted about this change.”<br />
<br />
Why? They weren’t consulted when the “a man and a woman” clause was added only
a few years ago. They weren’t consulted when homosexual acts were
decriminalised. <br />
<br />
As I’ve mentioned before, had you conducted a plebiscite in the state of
Mississippi in 1960 as to whether African Americans should be able to vote, it
is highly probably that the majority of Mississippians would have voted “no.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If that were the case, should the government
have legislated accordingly and restricted the vote in that state to whites
only?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course not. It is not part of
the democratic process that any majority can deprive a minority of
rights that they themselves enjoy. The right to vote <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">must </i>be universal. The right to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">marry
whom you want </i>must also be universal.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">7.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">“I’m
sick of being bullied by these LGBTI extremists.”<br />
<br />
Cry me a fucking river. Do you want to talk about the bullying that gay,
lesbian and trans people have had to put up with for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">two</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">thousand years? <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">8.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">“It’s
such a huge change.”<br />
<br />
No, it’s just a technicality. It only means that Same Sex couples get to sign a
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">marriage certificate </i>at the end of
their wedding. That’s all. It’s just about a <u>certificate</u> which then gets filed with the Registry of Births Marriages and Deaths. It creates a <i>public record</i> of your relationship which is what "legal" marriage is really all about.<br /><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt 36pt; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">9.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">“Just
because I’m opposed to Same Sex Marriage doesn’t make me a homophobe."<br />
<br />
Yes it does.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt 36pt;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt 36pt;">
<br /></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Ian McFadyenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15485556320535200135noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759415282581131550.post-37088571037465361962017-06-28T06:04:00.002-07:002017-06-28T06:04:37.214-07:00It's time to change the contempt of court laws. <span style="font-family: inherit;">Let it be said, for it is no secret among people that know me, that I am no fan of lawyers or the law. But even I must begrudgingly concede that some sort of system of laws and courts is a necessity. What I would insist, however, is that they are only a necessity - that is to say, a means - largely regrettable - for achieving a specific goal which is a peaceful, safe, non-violent society.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">There is for me, nothing magical or mysterious about the law or the legal system. They are simply tools for achieving social harmony, just as electric wires and water pipes are tools for delivering power and water to my kitchen. The Law is not some sort of magical Harry Potter world of arcane knowledge and be-robed wizards though you might well imagine it was if you go into a court room. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Australian lawyers still prance about the court in black robes and wigs while judges preside from the bench in long tresses and robes which increase in splendour as they rise up the ranks. There is also a pervading sense that lawyers and jurists see themselves as superior class of beings who are not going to take any impudence from us muggles.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Recently, three members of the Australian Parliament were summoned before the Supreme Court of Victoria to "show cause" why they should not be charged with contempt for criticising the sentencing decisions of some (unnamed) judges. At first the politicians admitted they had perhaps expressed their views a little immoderately but did not apologize. When threatened with contempt of court however, they were all forced to apologise.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I cannot express how outraged I am at the thought of three members of Parliament, duly elected representatives of the Australian people, being forced to abjectly apologise to what is essentially a group of public servants: the only reason being that these paid government employees had the power to send then to jail if they didn't. It is not only a violation of the right to freedom of speech but a perversion of how power in society ought to be exercised.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Contempt of court is, of course, a law which makes it an offence to disobey an order of the court. Fair enough, but it has been expanded however to include such things as making comments about matters that are </span><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">sub judice </span></i><span style="font-family: inherit;">in other words, relating to a trial that is in progress. This, it is claimed, is because, such comments can be construed is being an attempt to influence the decisions of the court.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Now, it might be faintly possible to see how comments might influence a jury hearing a case, but I'm not sure why it would be a problem in cases where only a judge is presiding. Are judges worried that a newspaper editorial in a paper, or television interview might cloud their judgements? Are they so unconfident about their own power to decide a case that they don't want to hear anyone else's opinion because it might confuse them?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Of course not. The reality is just that judges don't want people saying anything that might contradict them, and they will particularly not countenance anyone making any derogatory comments about them or the court procedure. It's the </span><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">impertinence </span></i><span style="font-family: inherit;">of a lay person presuming to comment on a trial, or indicating anything less than respect and deference to the court that is not to be tolerated. Thus it is an offence to comment unfavourably on a court's decision even after the case is over when clearly there is no risk of influencing the decision. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In the Victorian case, the judges justified their decision to take action against the politicians by citing the constitutional rules on "separation of powers." This simply states that the separate branches of government, the Legislative, the Executive and the Judiciary must operate independently and one must not be able to influence the other.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This is of course an absurd principle that has no justification in the modern world, and particularly not in Australia where, for a start, there is no separation between the Legislative and the Executive. However, while it is obvious that courts must be independent from outside influences in making their decisions it is equally obvious that the principle is designed to prevent anyone influencing any particular case, not the overall operation of the courts as an public agency. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It is also important to note that the comments of the politicians were in relation to sentencing, which is already not a wholly independent function of the court. The Victorian Chief Justice noted that attempting to influence the court in its sentencing decisions is ‘impermissible in law”. Now, if that is the case, then how are victim-impact statements, pre-sentence reports and other testimony
from experts, which are considered by judges </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">and are specifically intended to influence sentencing decisions, permissible in law? If victim impact statements are permissible, in a case where the victim
is the wider community, as in the case of terrorism, why should not representatives of the community be allowed to make statements that reflect the concerns of the community. Surely the public at large has a legitimate interest in the sentencing of people who have declared themselves to be enemies of the public.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And surely, if all sources of influence are to be eradicated than the reportage of all crimes, especially those of highly disturbing nature would have to be prohibited until after the completion of the trial.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In regard to the fact that is “constitutionally impermissible”
for one branch of government to influence another let us say that, for a start, it would be
absurd to imagine that the Legislative branch of the Australian government does
not influence the Executive Branch as they are drawn from the same group of
people who alternately sit in Cabinet one day and Parliament the next. Unlike the United States where the President is separately elected and empanels his own Cabinet from whomever he chooses, the
operations of the Australian Executive, i.e. the Cabinet and Public Service, are inextricably
entwined with decisions made in the Parliament. What do we imagine is going on when an Senate Estimates Committee interrogates
Ministers and public servants about their actions?</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Secondly, defining the Judiciary as a branch of <i>government</i> is
anachronistic and repugnant. Judges are not elected and they have no power to pass laws. Essentially the
Judiciary is a branch of the public service and shares the same status as the
Police, the Armed Forces and the Departments of Health, Education, Customs and so on. Like those other agencies they are paid for
from tax payers' funds and ultimately accountable to Parliament to fulfil the role assigned to them. The Courts are one part of the trio of agencies that make up the Law Enforcement system - Police, Courts and Correctional Services. Significantly the Police and Correctional Services are legally, and frequently criticised. So why can't the courts be since they are part of the same system? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Of course independence is a necessity, but the question is what constitutes independence. The concept of anyone in power, elected or not, being
able to influence the court to find someone guilty or not guilty is unthinkable.
In the same way, the notion of a politician being able to tell a doctor how to
perform an operation is unthinkable. However, if a disturbingly large number of patients start dying, the doctor responsible can be suspended, investigated, fired or even charged with criminal
negligence. In other words, the independence of the medical practitioner and
the doctor-patient relationship is respected, but still conditional upon the doctor providing the service they are hired to, which is make people well.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">If a judge were, hypothetically, to start making decisions that were dangerously irrational some intervention on the part of the government would surely be not only justified but essential.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In any case, sentencing is a different matter. As mentioned above, judges
typically request and receive advice from a variety of people before making
sentencing decisions because sentencing in not based on a knowledge of law
alone. Indeed it has been suggested from time to time that, because of
their inexperience in assessing the likelihood of offenders re-offending,
sentencing should be taken out of hands of judges and passed over to specialist
sentencing tribunals. It is not known whether this would be an improvement but
the notion itself is an acknowledgement that a different skill set is involved.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Finally, however, the reliance on "the separation of powers" argument by the court is misleading because the reality is that <u>any</u> citizen who openly criticizes the court can be charged with contempt of court whether they are in a position of power or not. T</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">his notion that respect for the court and the
judicial system supersedes all over considerations (such as freedom of speech) is
uncomfortably reminiscent of prelates who placed the reputation of the
Church above justice for victims of abuse.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Contempt of Court laws must be amended to apply solely to situations were people directly disobey orders from the Court. To use them to shield judges from criticism is itself contemptible.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<br /></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span>Ian McFadyenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15485556320535200135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759415282581131550.post-32500701552064073492017-06-07T16:22:00.000-07:002017-06-09T02:02:39.606-07:00Why Brexit is the first step to combatting terrorism<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">For many people, the primary cause of the Second World War
was nationalism – the ethos of creating and promoting a strong and distinct
sense of national identity among the citizens of a country. In particular the
intense nationalism of Nazi Germany, which characterised Germany and Germans as
the rightful rulers of the world, followed closely by the fanatical patriotism
of the Japanese who also regarded themselves as destined to rule at least the
Eastern Hemisphere was blamed for the conflagration the consumed 40 million
lives.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">In fact, nationalism had been under attack from the Marxists in the 19</span><sup><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> century. Socialists were internationalists, convinced
that nationalistic sentiments, which led inexorably to wars, were part of a
capitalist strategy to divide and exploit the working class.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">However, nationalism has one great strength that
internationalism lacks. Nationalism is a remedy for tribalism.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">In promoting a
national identity, citizens are encouraged, not necessarily to abandon things
such as ethnic or religious identity but to subordinate them to their identity as
citizens of their country. Internationalism fails to do this because it is
inherently multicultural, seeking to unite people under some form of global
government or ideology while at the same time retaining their local cultures
and customs. In short, internationalism is essentially just anti-nationalism in
that it accepts national governments as administrative and political instruments
but believes that there are only two permissible types of identity – the identity
which arises from your membership of a particular ethnic, racial or religious
group, and your identity as a member of the global human race.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">The European Union arose initially as an attempt to replace
the nationalism, which people blamed for starting two devastating wars, with a
pan-European identity. This worked to a certain extent with many people,
notably from the intellectual classes, prepared to declare that they were “Europeans”
rather than British or French. But this declaration was mostly theoretical. Defining
oneself as “European” became problematic when someone asked “Well, what does
that mean? What constitutes European characteristics?” The problem with
creating a "European" identity is, firstly, that Europe is extremely diverse
in its cultures: Greece is not like Sweden and Spain is not like Poland.
Secondly, ethnic identity can be subordinated to national identity when people
intermingle but in the EU, despite the opening of borders, most French people
still live in France and most Germans still live in Germany. Thirdly, an essential
requirement of a national identity is a physical border to define who is in and
who is not in the nation. They EU’s border is poorly defined having some countries
on its perimeter which are not quite in, like Norway, some trying to get in and
some perhaps on the verge of leaving or being thrown out. Fourthly, national identity
depends on some sort of strong central government, not only for the unification
of laws, which is essential for any national identity, but also to manage the
cultivation of that identity and the rituals and reassurances the constantly
remind people of what country, and what </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">kind
</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">of country they live in. The EU has no such central government, only a
Byzantine bureaucracy in Brussels with an unelected Parliament and a leaders which
most people in the member countries cannot name, and certainly could not
recognise on sight.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">For the last five hundred years, probably no country, with possible
exception of Japan, has had such a clear sense of national identity as Britain,
even given the separatist sentiments of some refractory Scots. From the time
Henry VIII set up Britain’s own version of the Catholic Church and Elizabeth
oversaw the destruction of the Armada, Britain saw itself as a unique nation,
blessed with a continuity unimpeded by the constant ebb and flow of invasions and
empires that constantly changed identities across the Channel. That strong sense of being English, later British,
created a unity that was even capable of surmounting the British class system. The
revolutionary leaders of France envied this unity and were at pains to impose a
similar French identity on their country, still embodied today in the “Vive la
France” attitude. The </span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Risorgimento </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">turned “Italian” from a geographical term to a
type of citizenship and the unification of a mass of tiny fractious
kingdoms and principalities into what became Germany was effected by the creation of a
national identity - "German" - which subsumed older identities such as Prussian or Bohemian.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">
Now, it is possible to argue that this process of concatenating small countries into
large countries suppressed conflict </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">within</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
European nations but led to vastly more destructive wars </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">between</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> the nations, and this indeed is true. But the fact that one
of those recently formed nations got carried away with their new-found identity
doesn’t mean that nationalism is a bad thing </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">per se</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">. By way of contrast, we can see how quickly dismantling
nationalism can reanimate old ethnic loyalties and hostilities in the case of Yugoslavia where, almost as soon as it fell apart in the collapse of the Soviet
Eastern bloc, war and genocide broke out amongst its former constituents.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">So what became of British nationalism when it joined the EU?
The answer is that it was severely compromised by the internationalist ethos underlying
The European Project. That of course was met with approval by many people – the
internationalist and socialists of the Sixties and Seventies - who equated
nationalism with jingoism and western chauvinism and still blamed patriotism
for the two world wars. In the wake of joining the EU, cultural diversity was
welcomed and celebrated and immigrants to Britain were not only permitted but encouraged
to retain their own cultures and values. The result has been the creation of
enclaves in Britain which are virtually countries-within-a-country. The “Trojan
Horse” scandal, though dismissed as a scare by the multiculturalists and
internationalists, saw several schools in the Birmingham region taken over by
Moslem-dominated school councils which altered the school curriculum to conform
to Islamic principles and virtually turned them into madrassas. Surveys in
Britain have shown that up to 30% of Moslem immigrants believe that communities
where large number of Moslem people live should be able to impose sharia law. Again,
these problem largely arise because anti-nationalism believes in empowering local
communities at the expense of national government. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Now, finally, Prime Minister (for the time being) Theresa
May, has said “Enough is enough” and “We have shown too much tolerance for
extremism.” But the real problem began long before extremism. It began with the
notion that British culture and British law was nothing special and in no way
superior to any other European country, or indeed the world. This comes about because the internationalism
that justifies British renouncing its own sovereignty to join the EU is the
same internationalism that comprises the notion of <i>cultural relativism</i> – the
belief that all cultures are equally good, all religions are equally good, all societies
are equally effective and worthy of respect. That cancer of social relativism,
which has seeped into public policies across the western world, has seriously hampered
attempts in the West to stamp out barbaric practices and, what is worse,
ignorance.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">It is worth noting
that even though American patriotism is obnoxious with its inherent belief that
America is the “greatest country in the world” and crowds chanting “U.S.A.- U.S.A”,
the United States, with five times the population of the UK, has experienced </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">only a tiny handful </span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">of home-grown
Islamic terrorist incidents compared to UK which, given the size of its
population and the easy access to guns, is quite remarkable.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">The first step to attenuating the danger of home-grown
terrorism in the UK is for the country to regain its own sense of self; to
regain a sense of pride not for its tolerance but for what it is </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">not</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> prepared to tolerate; to make young
people growing up in Britain proud to be British rather than proud to be
Moslem. In short, if a country doesn’t
offer young people something to believe in, there are lots of other people who
will.</span></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Ian McFadyenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15485556320535200135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759415282581131550.post-12984311976353204772017-05-06T21:13:00.000-07:002017-05-06T21:24:55.096-07:00Is it time to do the kindest thing to Australian television?<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Some 28 years ago, due to the success of <i>The Comedy
Company,</i> I was invited to speak at the National Press Club in Canberra. In my address, I said that it was only by pure luck that the show made it onto air in the
first place because it was so hard for people outside "the industry"
to sell a program to one of Australia’s three commercial networks. </span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(It was equally hard to sell a program to the ABC but that
is a subject for another time.)</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Because of this, I said I looked forward, perhaps overoptimistically,
to a time when there might be more than just three commercial networks that producers
could approach to get their programs on air. Some press reported that I had “surprised”
the audience by “calling for deregulation” but i</span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">n fact I was not in favour of deregulation. I was just, like many others, frustrated by the three-way monopoly that has
dominated Australian television through my lifetime What I was calling for was more competition.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">The justification for the limited number of broadcasters in
the Australian industry was always the limited VHF and UHF bandwidth thus the potential diversity presented by the switch to digital broadcasting
which allowed a greater number of channels on air was seen as a great opportunity to break down this tri-opoly. The established networks
however were very quick to make sure that they would operate any new channels
that appeared. For many years they lobbied the government feverishly for the
ability to multi-channel, arguing that they were losing money due to
competition from DVDs, computer games and the Internet. The government finally
amended the broadcasting regulations to allow the existing networks to
broadcast on several channels simultaneously. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">The result, as we now see, is basically a disaster and has not even made a difference to the profitability of the channels; they continue to lose money
and to complain about competition from other sources such as Netflix.
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Multi-channelling by a single broadcaster was, of course a bizarre notion
from the outset. If a broadcaster could not attract sufficient viewers to make
one channel profitable, how could they attract enough to make several channels
profitable? Surely having multiple channels would only divide an already shrinking audience, which is exactly was has happened. And wouldn’t operating three channels entail purchasing three times the
amount of programs? But, of course, there was never any intention of broadcasting three
times the amount of programs or, at least, paid programs. Of the more than
twenty channels we now have, about a third of them are shopping channels, that
is to say, channels which only screen advertisements. The programming on these
channels is therefore not only free, the advertisers pay the networks for the
time. This is a television dream – to have advertising income but no actual
programs.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">The other multi-channels also involve little or no program
outlays; they either screen time-delayed programs which have already been shown
on the primary channel, or inexpensive repeats.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">In fact is that the real benefits of multi-channelling were:</span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">1.</span><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The circumvention of any restrictions on
advertising. Once upon a time the Broadcasting Control Board (remember them) put limits on the amount of advertising a channel could screen per hour. The Australian government abandoned that idea many years ago, opting, in response to the
constant whingeing from the networks, for the absurd principle of “self-regulation.” The result is that networks are now permitted
to run as many ads per hour as they think the audience can stand, and to even run channels that are 24 hour-a-day continuous advertisements.</span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">2.</span><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The circumvention of any kinds of quotas on original
Australian drama or children’s drama. One might have expected that, if a
network was obliged to screen 100 hours of original prime time drama per year when
running one channel, it would have to screen 300 hours of such material when
running three channels, but that is not the deal. Whatever quotas now exist,
and they appear to have been pretty much abandoned, the
networks can spread them across all of their multi-channels.</span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">3.</span><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The ability to schedule programs across several
channels at different times allowed the FTA broadcasters to meet the of
challenge of Foxtel by offering similar flexibility in viewing times. (We must remember
that for twenty years the networks were terrified of Foxtel which now seems
like a minor problem compared to the Internet and is itself now facing the
same sorts of problems from on-line entertainment as the FTA broadcasters.)</span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt 36pt; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">4.</span><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The granting of commercial digital channels exclusively to the
existing networks shored them up from any challenge from new players entering
the scene. Thus the one opportunity in the last 50 years to throw the industry open to new players
came and went without incident and the potential revolution that digital broadcasting might
have triggered was thwarted.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">The other question that has dominated network operators has been how to establish a pay-per-view system. All
networks were keen to set up their own pay services like Stan and have
canvassed all sorts of ways to move their programming onto the Internet where it can be pay-walled, only to be overshadowed by the services like Netflix
that strode onto the field armed with a vast library of US movie and TV titles.
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Now, in response to further sobbing and bawling from the
networks, the government has agreed to dispense with licence fees, meaning that
three large companies are being granted access to big slabs of precious
broadcasting bandwidth (technically a public asset like a mining tenement) without having to pay any kind of royalty to the nation.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">In other words, the television industry now occupies a
position almost identical to that of the (former) Australian car
industry except that it doesn’t employ enough people
to justify direct government subsidies. Rather, successive Australian
governments have supported it by removing almost every requirement
relating to social responsibility and, more importantly, refusing to
let competitors enter the market.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Indeed, when people talk about the "television industry" they are not talking about the technology as a whole; they are referring to three companies which dominate it.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Back in the early
Nineties, British broadcasting television consisted of three BBC channels, one ITV channel which was the commercial channel and Channel 4 which was financed from advertising revenue from ITV. Time on ITV was allocated to
various companies who held licences to broadcast on the network at
various times and in various territories. For example, as its name suggests,
London Weekend Television had a licence to broadcast in London on Weekends.
Companies like Thames Television, Granada, TV-AM, Anglia and Yorkshire Television etc had licences for
other times and other places. Those licences tended
to be automatically renewed until Margaret Thatcher put an end to it. She decided
to put all those licences up for auction, which not only raised a large amount
of money for the national coffers (Carlton outbid Thames with a £43 million per annum offer) and led to massive changes in commercial
broadcasting.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">The licences granted to Australian television broadcasters
have been rubber-stamped for over 50 years. The notion of a licence being
cancelled has never been contemplated, even when networks went out of business
or changed owners or even had foreign owners prompting the question, “What
would it take for an Australian network to lose its broadcast licence?”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">The answer it appears, is nothing. Not only has the idea of
cancelling an operator’s licence never been considered, licences are able to be
bought and sold without the new owner having to pass any kind of suitability
test. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">The bottom line is that the Australian television industry is
probably the most protected industry in the country, and one wonders why this
is so. In an age where Facebook has more to do with deciding elections than
print or television, the networks' political
influence is surely waning and they certainly don't have entire towns dependent on them for employment. And despite all the government's commitment to fostering Australian talent and supporting the film industry, current network programming consists almost universally of "reality" shows (drama programs made without writers or actors) and franchised international gameshows and talent quests. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Perhaps all the politicians have shares in Google and
Netflix and are content to sit back and watch the television networks disintegrate from
the corrosion of their own incompetence.</span><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">But surely it's cruel to watch them suffer like this. Perhaps it's time to take Australian television to the vet and do the kindest thing?</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><br /></span></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Ian McFadyenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15485556320535200135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759415282581131550.post-17217150305259197982017-01-30T16:58:00.000-08:002017-01-30T22:17:01.465-08:00The Best Words - Trump, Hanson and language.<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">The rise of Donald Trump like some grotesque balloon in the Thanksgiving Parade and the rise of Pauline Hanson from
the grave like some political zombie have a lot to do with words. In particular
they have a lot to do with the power of spoken words as opposed to written
words.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Written words have shaped the modern world. Prior to
Gutenberg, books existed but they were expensive and accessible only to a small
section of society. The printing press made books available to almost everyone.
This not only changed the way information flowed, it even changed the way
people thought.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Prior to printing, ideas were communicated primarily by
speech – the priest preached from the pulpit, the master instructed the
apprentice, the mayor made public announcements in the village square. Speech
had one overriding virtue: it was public. One person can communicate to many
people at once: a congregation, a brigade, a classroom, even a large crowd if a PA system is available.
In other ways it is, however, limited. Firstly by time. People usually cannot listen
to someone talking for more than a couple of hours as anyone who has endured a
Speech Night knows. And informal verbal communication, such as the conversations people have in a bar or at a barbecue, is even more
limited. These discussions generally consist of short blocks of speech delivered alternately
by the participants, often hastily when the topic is
controversial. Also, no one has
editorial control over a conversation and the discussion can quickly veer off
into other topics as new ideas are introduced.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Books, on the other hand, are not time limited. While a lecture
or a speech may last an hour, reading a book can take twenty hours or fifty
hours. Also, books are carefully prepared and constructed. The author has
control and the flow of ideas is not interrupted. Thus a book can communicate more
complex and extensive ideas than a speaker and those ideas can be enhanced by
references, quotations, footnotes and illustrations. Most significantly, reading
is a silent activity making it a <i>private communication</i> between the author and
the reader.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Books thus brought about two major changes to the world.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Firstly, <b>reading created the notion of the personal
intellect</b>. One of the strengths of communicating through speech is that
everyone gets the same message which is important if there is something
everyone needs to know. But it can also however be seen as a limitation, even a
form of oppression. With the advent of books, rather than being educated,
instructed and informed </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">en masse, </span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">individuals
could assemble their own library of books and develop their own views of the
world. And because books contain more complex ideas and more information than
spoken language, an intellect formed by reading is more sophisticated and
better informed than one shaped solely by weekly sermons at the church and local
gossip. The advent of books not only gave individuals the ability
to develop their own personal intellects, it was perhaps the first time that the whole idea of a person having their <i>own view </i>of the world was realised.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">(It has also been surmised that reading books was
the first private and independent activity that women ever experienced.)</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Of course books can include ideas that contradict the prevailing
beliefs in the community which is why the Nazis were quick to burn books,
knowing they could might cause people to doubt or question the propaganda blaring from the loudspeakers
of the Third Reich. But despite bannings and burnings, books continued to
be read and gradually eroded the old Medieval culture which was based mainly on
verbal communication. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Reading however did not just change the channels and sources
of information: it changed the way people thought. Speech is delivered in relatively
short sentences that are most devoid of qualifications, exceptions and caveats.
A mind formed by solely by speech tends to have simplistic concepts that are regarded as
immutable “facts”. Written language, however, with its toolkit of adjectival,
adverbial and conditional clauses, complex sentence structure, capacity to
cross-reference and pursue the implications of arguments and hypotheses, and ability
to lay out discussions two-dimensionally rather than in a simple linear narrative,
awakens the reader to the complexity of ideas, the interdependence of concepts
and ultimately the tentative and ongoing nature of all intellectual inquiry.
Books, unless they are specifically designed not to, smash certainty and with
it, prejudice.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">The second thing that books did was to create the middle
class. From the 16</span><sup><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> century onwards, the main feature that
distinguished the lower class from the middle class was the ownership of books.
The middle class was, essentially, the class that could read, a definition which
still holds theoretically today. “White collar” citizens (a classification that did not exist
before the invention of books) may earn less than tradespeople, mine workers or
construction labourers but being able to read and write extended slabs of text (i.e. get a college degree)
defines them as being members of a higher class.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">So, more than any other thing, books and the literate,
educated middle class that read them created the modern world. The concept of the personal intellect led inevitably to the notion of having a personal and private relationship with God, i.e. Protestantism and writing and publishing over time led to science, economics, political theory and
eventually democracy.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Which brings us to Trump and Hanson.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">While reading and writing created our world, politicians (or
should we say, wise politicians) know that not everyone reads and especially, not
everyone reads history, economics or political texts. In fact, very few people
read “serious” literature at all. The way to the electorate’s heart is still via spoken language and that must be language that is understood
by the majority of people. We still remember people, even educated people,
recoiling at Kevin Rudd’s tendency to descend into bureaucratic gobbledygook
with such terms as “programmatic specificity.” No one likes a smart-arse.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">In contrast, the political power of
politicians such as Churchill, Roosevelt, Menzies and Obama lay in their
ability to communicate important ideas in language that was understandable yet powerful. But those speakers might be regarded as assuming some basic
level of literacy and readership among the population. Churchill, Roosevelt and
Menzies were certainly speaking to a population that read.
When those politicians spoke, they spoke a language that was informed by written
language. They formed sentences such as you might construct on a page – simpler
and shorter indeed – but containing elements of imagery, carefully chosen words
and rhythms such as you might find in written text.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">But what of a world where communication and entertainment is
dominated by movies, television, radio and the Internet? What of a world where
people get their news, as has been claimed, from Facebook and politicians are
interviewed on morning television shows? The Internet is not, in general, a haven
for carefully constructed prose. Indeed, the most widely used forum for
political discussion on the Internet, Twitter, specifically disallows any
serious comment by limiting all communications to 140 characters!! I can’t put enough exclamation points after
that sentence. That is not just a
limitation on comment size, it is a limitation on THOUGHT. And this is a
channel that is used by Donald Trump and which all politicians are being urged
by their minders to master.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">And that brings us to Hanson. People will say
they agree with Hanson’s policies but they not really policies at all.
They are really just the sort of things people say in pubs collected and presented as a
political manifesto. Hanson doesn’t even (and this is her strength) even bother
to re-word these comments into formal political language: she expresses them in
pretty much the same words as they are when uttered around the barbecue.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Similarly, Trump has stolen a considerable number of
Republican voters away from the main party by expressing ideas in terms that
are essentially non-literate. He speaks in short simple sentences devoid of any
complicating dependent clauses: “I will build a wall. And I will get Mexico to
pay for it.” No qualifications, amplifications or explanations. Now in office, Trump
continues to make these utterances such as “We are going to tax imports from
Mexico.” without any further information of how such a taxation scheme might
work. And this seems to have resonated
with a considerable number of American voters who see Trump as a good straight,
plain speaking antidote to the “political elites” (readers) which Hillary Clinton
unfortunately came to represent.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">And so we have perhaps returned to a pre-Gutenberg world.
The middle class is no longer defined by the number of books they own but by
the type of coffee they drink (quarter-strength soy latte with Fair Trade
beans), the Prius they drive (I’m saving the environment – no you're not), the width of their flat screen TV (all the better to watch
Married At First Sight) and the fact they voted for a black president in 2008
(but not so much in 2012). In a world where even educated Americans speak in clichés,
wear slogans on their t-shirts, post sampler-type homilies on Facebook, go on endlessly
and narcissistically about loving yourself and living your dream, where emojis replace
long complicated blocks of text such as “Love you”, perhaps Trump is actually right
when he says he has “the best words”.</span><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Ian McFadyenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15485556320535200135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759415282581131550.post-74974425046596817352017-01-01T21:08:00.001-08:002017-01-01T21:08:06.499-08:00The problem with CGI resurrections or why Grand Moff Tarkin is still uncanny<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Many people were surprised to find that </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Rogue One </span></i><span style="font-family: Calibri;">featured an actor who died in 1994. I must admit that when Peter Cushing appeared on screen as
Grand Moff Tarkin, Governor of the Outland Regions, I was rather taken aback. I
was pretty sure he was dead and this was a computer recreation or should I say
resurrection. However, regardless of whether my historical knowledge was
correct, within a few seconds I was pretty sure this was a computer image. It
was almost completely convincing but there was still something wrong.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">What that thing was, was movement.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Since 3D animation was first pioneered, people have talked
about the “uncanny valley.” This is the problem that while we can accept the
stylised faces of humans such as those in </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Toy
Story, </span></i><span style="font-family: Calibri;">when we attempt to create faces that attempt to replicate faces that look “real”,
there is something odd about them, even creepy. The paradox lies in the fact that, strangely, the
</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">closer </span></i><span style="font-family: Calibri;">we get to replicating the shape,
colour, texture and luminance of real faces, the more odd they seem.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I think that much of the problem of uncanniness arises because CGI people
tend to look “mechanical” – not in their structure or texture but in their
<i>movements</i>. For faces - apart from ones like models'
which have been botoxed into paralysis –
are never still. Perhaps this is why some photographic models look like CGI.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">People not only have individual faces and individual voices
but individual ways of moving. They stand differently, walk differently and
move their hands, eyes and heads differently. Some of these are subtle and some
more obvious. Patterns of bodily movement are so distinct that we are able to recognise
people from far away, long before we can see their faces or body
details, just from the way they walk. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Alec Guinness once said that in order to find a character,
he had to know how the character walked. What he was suggesting was that gait
can be an indicator of personality.
Generations of actors have given us a range of distinctive walking and
even standing styles, from James Cagney’s square shouldered, confrontational
stance often with fists held clenched in front, ready for action, to John Wayne’s
lumbering, rolling walk with head tilted up and arms hanging loosely at his
sides or a thumb hooked into his belt. Dustin Hoffman displays an
odd jerky way of walking as does, strangely, the very physically different James
Caan. Some actors are constantly moving, while others remain almost perfectly
still. Some remain in one pose for a while and then move suddenly into another
one. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It’s not just a matter of height and weight but the
way we move our bodies idiosyncratically.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In Rogue One, Darth Vader is “bodied”
(is that the physical equivalent of “voiced”?) by Daniel Naprous and Spencer
Wilding. They were presumably chosen because they could match the height and
power of 6’6” body-builder David Prowse who was the original Vader. Indeed,
when Darth Vader appears in Rogue One, the body has the same impact and yet….
there’s something different about the walk. It’s not </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">quite </span></i><span style="font-family: Calibri;">how Prowse used to move.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The notion that we are identified and interpreted by our
body language makes sense. After all, animals judge each other’s mood by
physical cues – raised hackles, bared teeth, defensive postures. We too are
constantly reading, even if not fully aware of it, the emotions and intentions of
others through tiny clues. Store security staff learn to spot shoplifters from
their physical behaviour, even when, or perhaps particularly when, they are
acting “casual.” We know when our friends or partners are lying because of
almost imperceptible changes in their expressions or bodily movements meaning
that we are more accustomed than we realise to their characteristic physical
behaviour.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I have a friend who always turns his head about 30 degrees
to the side, alternating from left to right, when he is listening to you. I have
another who always leans forward across a table for emphasis when telling you something.
When we watch television we might notice how Nigella Lawson looks sideways at
the camera as she cooks, smiling an almost sly smile, while other cooks
maintain almost no eye contact at all or just flash an occasional glance. David Attenborough is always sitting or
squatting comfortably with simple hand gestures for emphasis while Tony
Robinson seems always to be charging around antiquities sites hands waving as
he makes some historical point. What is interesting is that once their normal way of moving is established, people rarely move like someone else. Attenborough is unlikely ever to be seen walking
along a breakwater, shoulders hunched and hands plunged into his pockets like
Neil Oliver or tramping stoically across an old battlefield like David Starkey.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The way people hold themselves, walk, move their hands, angle their heads, shift their weight, look around, look
at you, or not look at you, are all part of their individual physical personality. In the case of the Grand Moff, it seems the
animators managed to construct a reasonable facsimile of Peter Cushing’s face
and body, and voice artist Guy Henry managed a believable reproduction of his
voice but capturing the minutiae of Cushing’s body language, as with Darth
Vader, was more difficult. The great challenge for 3D (re-)animators is not just
to create pore-accurate models of living or deceased actors but to be able to
capture the unique signature that habitual behaviour has stamped on their physical
actions. Then they will have truly reproduced the sense of a real human being.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span><br />
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Ian McFadyen Jan 2017Ian McFadyenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15485556320535200135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759415282581131550.post-9015196440393056702016-10-07T16:11:00.002-07:002016-10-07T16:11:38.727-07:00What People Don’t Understand about the Rich.<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
People, particularly socialists, don’t understand the Rich <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They’re always complaining about how rich rich people are, and
how they’re getting richer. They’re always making comparisons between the
incomes of average families and the incomes of the rich and the super rich. It
is often seen as morally offensive, if not a crime against humanity, that
someone can hack away at a dull job five days a week and take home $700 after
tax while a CEO basks in a three million dollar a year salary and media barons
can have assets amounting to billions.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Well, I’ve got a flash for everyone. The wealth of these
people is not a bad thing. In fact, it’s a sign that we’re <i>all</i> doing well. Of course I
agree that it’s <i>annoying</i>. There’s no
argument there. We all wish we had that kind of money. Many of us probably
deserve to have money much more than these rich people - many of whom are
greedy, dull and not even that intelligent - but to complain about the inequality
of wealth in society in general is not only a waste of time but is a misunderstanding
of what it actually <i>means</i>. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Many people see the disparity between incomes of normal
people and the superrich as an indictment of western society. It isn’t. In
fact, the wealth of the super-rich is an indication of the <i>success</i> of western society. The wealth of the billionaires is a <i>by-product of the collective wealth of the
society as a whole. </i>In other words: the rich are only rich because <u>we</u>
are.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Socialists have never grasped this. The basic tenet of
Socialism has always been that the rich are rich because the rest of us are poor
- the idea being that somehow it’s a zero-sum game - that there’s a finite pool
of wealth and the rich have taken more than their share; that somehow it’s <i>our </i>money that they’re spending. This
notion was developed by Marx who theorised that capitalists in the 19<sup>th</sup>
century got rich by stealing the wealth created by the workers. The problem is that
Marx, although he wrote a book called Das Kapital, never really understood the basic
principle of capital. He saw industrialists as a new version of the old
European aristocracy and industrial workers as a new class of serfs condemned
to labour for centuries to keep their capitalist masters wealthy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Marx’s error was that he saw capitalism as a system where workers
laboured in the mines and factories that were owned by an entrepreneur class, to
produce goods and services which were then consumed by the middle class. Thus,
the middle class would enjoy ever-improving standards of living while the
workers continued to live in squalor. What Marx didn’t understand was that for
capitalism to work, workers <i>themselves</i>
had to become consumers of the goods they produced and, because capitalism constantly
reduces the cost of goods, their standards of living would gradually rise. Marx’s
prediction of the proletariat enduring a state of permanent servitude was
disproved just by observing the living conditions of workers in the 1950s as
compared with the living conditions in
the 1850s.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Unions will claim that the improvement in conditions is due
to the efforts of the trade union movement, decades of strikes, go-slows, rallies, lock-outs, picket
lines and lobbying, however this is simply not true. Workers’ wages, compared
to managers wages and upper management wages are no higher now that they ever
were, in fact in some cases workers’ wages have fallen in comparison to
executives.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So if workers aren’t really being paid any better. How come
they’re better off? How can skilled and unskilled workers own cars and
television sets and even pay off homes?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Okay, a lesson in basic economics.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Imagine a tailor in the days before industrialisation. The
tailor makes shirts for a living. Hand cutting and stitching, he can make 5
shirts a week. Let’s also say he needs $100 a week to pay his rent, put food on
the table, buy shoes for his children and buy cloth and cotton for the shirts.
He really can’t afford to charge less than $20 a shirt and hope he sells all
the shirts he makes.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now comes an industrialist who calculates that by setting up
a factory with sewing machines and power cutters he can produce 1000 shirts a
week, using only 50 employees. To do this, the industrialist will have to
persuade someone to put up many thousands of dollar to equip the factory. If he’s
lucky he will find one very rich person willing to invest. Early in the
industrial revolution, many of the financiers were aristocrats. Alternatively,
the industrialist can sell shares in the company to a large number of people
who have smaller though still substantial sums of money to invest. Whatever the
ownership structure however, the important thing is that the investors get a
return on their money. Unless they make a reasonable return, they might as
well leave the cash it in the bank and
get interest. And given that there’s always a risk in such a venture - the
shirts may not sell - the return will have to be sufficient to coax them take
the risk.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Let’s say that our industrialist raises $100,000 in capital
and sets up a factory with modern textile technology. He hires 50 people to
operate the machines and they go into production. They produce 1000 shirts a
week, meaning each employee is now producing four times the number of shirts that
the tailor did working on his own. If the industrialist pays his workers the
same wage as the tailor was seeking - $100 a week - the wages bill will be $5000
a week. If the factory sells the shirts at a wholesale price of $7 it will get a
weekly income of $7,000, enough to cover the wages bill and the cost of
materials, plus overheads, cost of repairs and pay the investors a 10% dividend
($10,000) at the end of the year. This dividend represents a profit to the investors
of about 20 cents a shirt. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This venture has now created wealth. Firstly, of course, it
has created wealth for the investors who are making more than if they just left
their money in the bank. But it has also created wealth for the public. People
are now able to buy a shirt for a retail price of $10 instead of $20. (The
factory doesn’t sell direct like the tailor so there’s a mark-up in the store.)
This means that when a customer buys a shirt, they have $10 more left over than
they used to. This allows them to consider buying something else. Even though the
investors are making a profit of 20 cents per shirt, the customer has actually
made a <i>bigger </i>profit of $10 on each
shirt. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>The point is that the
savings that result from using modern technology and production methods are <u>shared
</u>between the investor and the customer and the customer gets the greater
share.<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But what of the poor tailor, you say? He’s been put out of a
job. Yes, unless he is one of the 50 people working in the factory, he has,. Because
of mechanisation the factory will never need as many textile workers as there
were tailors, so even if all the people in the factory are ex-tailors, there
will still be tailors left over. So what are they to do?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The answer lies in the fact that people now have $10 left
over after buying a shirt. This means that they can buy other goods which
perhaps they could not afford before. Suddenly there is a general demand for
more goods and services and more factories and businesses spring up to serve
that need. Our tailor may not get a job in a garment factory but he might end
up making crockery or furniture or working in one of the new emporiums that
sell all the new consumer items.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Working in a factory may seem repetitious and depersonalised
but the tailor will soon realise there are benefits: his wage is regular and
reliable and he doesn’t have to provide his own equipment or materials. He too
notices too that when he buys shoes for his kids, the price has dropped
considerably. He too can afford things than he once couldn’t.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What has happened right across the society is that millions
of people are suddenly able to access goods and services that once they
couldn’t. For example, prior to the industrial revolution in <st1:country-region w:st="on">England</st1:country-region>, few working
class people could afford china. Their cups, plates and mugs tended to be tinplate,
enamel or even wood. By industrialising the production of china cups and
saucers, Josiah Wedgewood enabled millions of Britons to drink out of porcelain
cups and teapots for the first time - something which was also a health benefit
as porcelain is impervious to bacteria.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here it’s important to note that wealth doesn’t just mean
cash in hand, or the value of material assets. Wealth also includes having
better health, financial security, leisure time and access to recreational and
cultural activities. Many of these things are also created through investment.
Institutions such as schools, museums, galleries, parks, libraries and holiday
resorts are in their own way also means of creating wealth through “mass
production.” Schools, for example, can be seen as an efficient way of providing
“mass” education to the children of families who could not afford a private
tutor or governess.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The important thing to remember, however, is that the whole
capitalist process doesn’t work unless the customers <i>buy</i> the goods on offer. The manufacturer has to either offer a products
at a lower price, or a better product at the same price than their competitors.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And there will always be competitors. Our hypothetical shirt
manufacturer won’t have the field to themselves. Soon other factories will set
up offering either better shirts, or the same quality shirts at a cheaper
price. Faster machines or more efficient work practices could drop the price of
shirts to $9 or $8. The manufacturer has to continually improve their product and
the efficiency of production to stay in business. This means that the customers
are continually being offered better goods, and cheaper goods and <b>every time the price of goods drops, the
customers' wealth increases</b>. Even if their pay packet remains relatively
the same, the money in it becomes worth more and more over time. Hence a
workers wage which once only put modest food on the table and the meanest of
clothing today pays for food, power, phone, petrol, home insurance and
entertainment.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p> </o:p>And therein lies the basic principal of wealth. <i>Investors only make money if the customer
does</i>. The wealth which flows to the investor is a <i>share</i> of the wealth which flows to the customer. If the customer’s wealth does not increase,
the investor generally doesn’t make any money.
And the amount of money the investor or the manufacturer makes is a
rough indicator of how much wealth they’ve created in the society.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Take Bill Gates for example. He’s worth, on the basis of his
shares, many billions of dollars. In real terms, on a cash basis, he’s worth
hundreds of millions. This is because he was instrumental in marketing a series
of computer operating systems from MS-DOS working up to Windows 10 which
enabled an entire generation to run personal computers. Bill’s wealth may seem
excessive but if you look at it on a per-computer basis, the number of
computers running Microsoft software in the world is around one billion. If
Bill Gates were entitled to only one dollar for each of them he would have a
billion in cash - more than any other billionaire actually has (since most of
their wealth is calculated from the value of their assets.) Compared to that one dollar which goes to
Bill, how much wealth has the owner of the computer gained? The ability to
access the Internet, send emails, write documents, play games, print photos, run
businesses. schools, hospitals, airlines, newspapers and so on. When you
consider the value of the software to the user and society in general, a dollar
payment to Bill doesn’t seem that much. It’s just the huge size of the consumer
base that makes him so wealthy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So we shouldn’t writhe with resentment when we see the very
rich building their multi-million dollar homes and buying entre islands.
They’re only rich because they’ve made us all richer.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But there’s another reason why we shouldn’t resent them. We
need them.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As said earlier, the industrialist who has an idea how to
produce something better and cheaper needs to find investors. The problem with
investment is that it is always risky. It would be nice if an entrepreneur
could raise all their finance from ordinary people - what are called “Mom and
Pop” investors in the <st1:country-region w:st="on">U.S.</st1:country-region><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But there’s a problem with “Mom and Pop” investors.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mom and Pop can’t afford to lose their life savings. Every
so often entrepreneurs do persuade thousands
of ordinary people to invest in their projects and fund managers invest
their clients’ savings in their schemes that all too often end in tears. Many a
family has been ruined by investing in a speculative investment scheme that was
“guaranteed gilt-edge blue-chip.” The
fact is that many – perhaps most - business ventures fail. So what is needed
for economic development is a pool of people who are <i>so rich that they can afford to lose millions of dollars and not actually
go broke. </i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fortunately there are such people. And they are worth their
weight in gold. Literally. If we didn’t have people who could take a loss of
several million on an investment and still be able to go on investing, our
society would come to a standstill.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Actually it’s amazing that rich people do risk their money
in new ventures when they could just keep it in the bank. That’s what happens
when a depression occurs. During a depression, the rich don’t lose their money,
they just stop investing. The result is that they stay rich but everyone else gets
poor. Getting out of a depression is basically about getting the rich to invest
again. The only way of explaining why they do invest is just greed. So as
Gordon Gekko said “Greed is good.” If it
weren’t for greed the rich would simply keep their money in the bank and spend
it on luxuries.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, even though the rich are greedy, and boring and not even
that bright, we need the little darlings to help us get richer. Every time you
feel resentment that you are poor but Warren Buffet is rich, look around your
house and realise that everything you have, the phone, the carpet, the
television, the computer, the fridge, the stove, even the coffee mug on the
sink only exist because at some point, some rich person sank a couple of
million dollars into factory or a telephone company and made them all possible.
So let’s not begrudge them their huge but alienating houses, their expensive
but ugly clothes and their vacuous relationships - they’ve earned them and we
should let them enjoy them. It’s the least we can do.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Ian McFadyenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15485556320535200135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759415282581131550.post-35846414092223121682016-09-18T20:00:00.000-07:002016-09-18T20:00:00.477-07:00Shorten is right to oppose this unnecessary and undemocratic plebiscite.Lord knows, I am not a supporter of the Labour Party but Bill Shorten is right to oppose a plebiscite over same-sex marriage.<br />
<br />
I mean let's be clear. This notion of holding a
plebiscite on the question of same-sex marriage was simply a trick. It was a delaying
tactic, a stick thrown in front of same-sex marriage
campaigners to trip them up and impede the progress towards removing one of the
last remaining obstacles to equality for gay people.<br />
<br />
And it was a very clever
trick<br />
<br />
A plebiscite has the appearance of dealing with a vexed issue in a
democratic way even though we have been able to resolve these issues in the
past without any resort to plebiscites. We didn’t need a plebiscite to abolish
the death penalty in Australia, or to decriminalise homosexual acts. And, most
significantly, we didn’t hold a plebiscite before adding the provision “marriage
shall be between a man and a woman” a mere ten years ago.<br /><br />
But suddenly we need
a plebiscite to remove it.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now, thanks to this tactic, the argument has arisen that same-sex marriage entails such a huge change to Australia’s culture and
society that everyone is entitled to vote on the issue. There are only two
problems with this:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
1. <span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; text-indent: -18pt;"> </span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">It’s not a huge change. It’s a tiny technical
change. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -18pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -18pt;">2. </span><span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; text-indent: -18pt;"> </span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">You’re not voting on anything. Unlike a
referendum, a plebiscite is not binding. The answer you write on the paper does
affect any legislation, except psychologically. A plebiscite is just a 160
million dollar opinion poll which politicians can then refer to as indicator of
public opinion. And clearly the results can be used by both sides to justify
their position.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -18pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To explain the first point above. Despite the issues that
are raised by opponents of same-sex marriage, the question is not whether
same-sex couples can live together and raise children and generally be regarded
as normal families – <i>they are already legally doing
that. </i>Just like a
different-sex couples who are living together, same-sex couples are regarded as living in a <i>de facto</i> marriage by the ATO, Centrelink, the
Department of Social Services, the Family Court and just about every legal jurisdiction. They already have the same
rights, privileges and obligations as different-sex couples. So that’s not the
issue.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And it’s not about whether same-sex couples can <i>get</i> married in the sense of having a
marriage <i>ceremony</i>. Same-sex couples
can already find celebrants and even churches that will perform marriage
ceremonies where they make the same vows, with all the same sincerity and solemnity
as different-sex couples. The only difference is that, at the end of the
wedding ceremony, the different-sex couples get to sign a Marriage Certificate
and their marriage is recorded in the Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>That’s all it comes down to. Signing a certificate. That’s
what all the fuss is about.<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, why, given that same-sex couple are already have, for all intents and purposes, the same rights as different-sex couples in
regard to tax, inheritances, home loans, superannuation , divorce settlements,
child adoption and so on, are opponents of same-sex marriage determined to stop them from having their marriage
officially recorded by the Registry Office? The answer can only be - sheer
bloody-mindedness. It seems that opponents of same-sex marriage realise they
can’t stop same-sex couples living together, raising children, even adopting
children and claiming the title of parents but at least they can deny them this
one last thing –having their relationship officially recorded in the BDM Registry. Which is really just petty.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And the notion that people have a “right” to vote on this
issue is simply incorrect.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is not a principle of democracy that one group of citizens,
regardless of how large it is, can vote to suppress the rights of another
group. The most important feature of a right, be it enshrined in a Constitution,
a Bill of Rights, Statutes or Common Law is that it applies apply to <i>everyone</i>. This is the nature of Justice:
that the rules apply equally to all. Hence, if one person has the right to
marry the person of their choosing, then <i>everyone
</i>has the right to marry the person of their choosing.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Oddly, I am quite sure that if you polled the opponents of
same-sex marriage about arranged marriages – the situation that occurs in some
countries where young women and men are simply told who they have to marry –
they would repudiate it as barbaric – a violation of the right to choose
your own spouse. And yet they take the position that, in Australia, a gay man
can only get married to a woman and a gay woman can only marry a man. How is this not the same denial of choice?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The unfortunate situation we find ourselves in is that there are, in Australia, people who enjoy
the right and the privilege of being able to marry the person of their choice but
who wish to deny that right to others. That denial of what is surely one of the
most basic rights, is not something that can be justified by a plebiscite. Even
if 90% of the Australian population voted against same-sex marriage it would
still be a violation of human rights and thus an invalid vote, just as if
a majority of people voted to deny Aboriginal people the right to go to school,
or the right of women to be airline pilots. Such votes do occur from time to
time in the world but they do not constitute democracy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Ian McFadyenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15485556320535200135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759415282581131550.post-22968438752429883722016-07-19T23:28:00.003-07:002016-07-19T23:54:08.140-07:00Islam is not the real source of the problem.<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If we forget about Islam for a minute and actually start
profiling the people who commit terrorist acts we find quite a few similarities.
The first is that none of them are high or even medium achievers. They were
generally poor performers at school, work in low paid jobs and have few if any career
prospects. They either have no relationships with women or their relationships
are compromised by infidelity, exploitation, bullying or outright violence. Many are hyper-masculinised,
engaging in body building and steroid use and, like our own Ivan Milat, they are
fond of taking selfies holding weapons.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
These young men are found in all societies and they have
always been an important resource for political extremists. In the 1920s the
Nazi party in Germany recruited young violent thugs, put them in uniforms and
called them the SA. They were supposed to “protect” Nazi rallies from
disruption but their real job was to beat up political opponents and Jews. The Communist Party had its own paramilitary force to match them. In Northern Ireland,
violent young men were enlisted by both the IRA and the Loyalist defence groups
and sent out to kill each other and a lot of innocent civilians.<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The practice of recruiting not-too-bright, low-status, angry
young men to commit violent acts has been around for hundreds of years: the only thing that has changed is the method
of recruitment.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Nazis had to personally approach young men who came to
their meetings and ask them if they wanted to join. Osama Bin Laden was radicalised by a teacher at his high school. Prayer groups, sporting groups and other social
gatherings have served as forums where potential converts are identified and
approached. However, the advent of the Internet has brought with it the
possibility of recruitment over distances of thousands of kilometres.
Far more effective than pamphlets, and much easier to hide, websites can deliver
text, propaganda videos and on-line contact with others already in the
organisation.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Internet also enables remote activation. The genius of
ISIS (if we can use that word) has been to see that you don’t need to call your
recruits to a meeting, give them uniforms or weapons or even plans. No need to
synchronise watches: you simply instruct them to kill non-Muslims by whatever
means you have: kitchen knives, axes, a truck and so on, at any time
that you can. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is important to remember however, that though many of the
murders and massacres we have witnessed have been instigated by ISIS, these
angry young men are likely to take up arms for a range of causes. Anders Breivik, the Norwegian mass murderer,
shot 77 young Nords because he was <i>opposed</i>
to Muslims. Gavin Long, the Baton Rouge police killer, was acting out
of hatred for white people as was Micah Johnson the Dallas shooter.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So what kinds of
people are likely to commit terrorist acts?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The potential terrorist is typically a young male who has little prospect of significant achievement in mainstream society. He is likely to have learning
difficulties and low academic achievement. He is unlikely to have mature or
equitable relationships women and may express conflict over sexual matters where adolescent attitudes to sex are mixed with deep misogyny. He is likely to feel
isolated or discriminated against because of his ethnicity or religion and is likely to react with exaggerated chauvinism in relation to his own cultural heritage and
bigotry in relation to others. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Other predictive traits include aggression,
narcissism, intolerance of others’ views, an explosive temper and involvement in petty crime. Most significantly, he will be a young man with a poorly developed
sense of self who is looking for, or has found, a male role model on whom to
base his own identity. That male role
model may be a teacher, a religious leader, a para-military leader or just a more experienced and charismatic member of a
political or terrorist organisation. What he sees in that role model is the
person he want to be: a man who is strong, confident, respected, part of a supportive
band of brothers.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If society does not offer these poorly-formed, resentful, young men
opportunities to achieve a sense of value, ISIS, neo-Nazi groups, motorcycle gangs, drug
syndicates and other anti-social organisations will.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Ian McFadyenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15485556320535200135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759415282581131550.post-3767710526248397732016-06-14T01:00:00.000-07:002016-06-14T01:12:08.245-07:00Muhammad Ali and the glorification of violence.<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">I shouldn’t have been, but I was surprised that so many
people turned out to deliver eulogies on Muhammad Ali. </span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Actors, celebrities, even President Obama, turned up to honour
the great man’s achievements. I was not surprised that people should honour Ali
for his ebullient personality, courage, devotion to charity and work inspiring marginalised
people. I am just a bit surprised that none of these celebrities even </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">mentioned</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> that the way Ali
achieved greatness was by punching people until they were unconscious.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">After all, that was his job. Punching people.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">I know they call it “boxing” but it’s really just “punching.”
That’s all boxers do. They stand in a ring and punch each until one of them can’t
punch any more. In the Olympics, running is called “running”,
hurdling is called “hurdling” and swimming is called “swimming” so why is punching
called “boxing”? The answer is
that calling it “boxing” seems to be an attempt to disguise the activity from what it really is which is just fist fighting. Which is, oddly, the very same thing we’re currently trying to eradicate
from our streets and homes</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">After all, it is </span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">a <i>little</i>
surprising that, at a time when we are running campaigns to stop street violence and teach people that Once Punch Can Kill and eliminate violence in the home, that
people should be waxing lyrical about man whose entire career was based on punching
people till they fell down or were so injured that the referee would have to
stop the fight. At a time when schools are running anti-bullying programs and
trying to prevent violence in the playground, it is more than a little disturbing to
read biographical articles in which the writers seem to revel in the details
of Ali's victories – bloodied faces, opponents sprawling on the canvas. Why are
they not troubled that an African-American should find fame by
inflicting brain damage on other African-Americans for the entertainment of cheering
crowds of morons? </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Yes, I know that some people will say boxing is an ‘art.’ But... no. Embroidery is an art. Etching, sculpture, wood carving, poetry and song-writing
are arts. Boxing - that is: punching - is a skill just as butchering a carcass or
gutting a fish is a skill. It takes practice but its primary purpose is still to inflict damage on a body. What is possibly most remarkable is that, in other sports, punching someone will
get a player sidelined, sin-binned, suspended, fined or even banned from the game.
So how is it we tolerate a game where the </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">entire
aim </span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">is to punch your opponent? </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">The sickening answer to the contradiction is that there are
still people out, mainly men (let’s face it) who think that boxing, punching,
fighting, martial arts – whatever you want to call it – is “manly”; that fighting is some sort of sign of
masculinity - even a <i>requirement</i> of masculinity. This, of course, is the underlying cause of street attacks, bar
fights, road rage and, ultimately, domestic violence.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">So again why, given the current efforts to remove violence from society and knowing that it causes brain damage, is
boxing still legal? And how do we now have an even <i>more</i> violent
incarnation of street fighting called "UFC" where combatants </span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">kick, gouge, knee and batter
each other <i>in a cage?</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">And most perplexing, what
kind of arsehole pays to go and watch this? Over to you world.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span>Ian McFadyenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15485556320535200135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759415282581131550.post-13684717084443735282016-04-08T20:30:00.003-07:002016-04-08T20:30:54.202-07:00Reflections of Bob Ellis and the Labor Party.
<br />
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<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;"><b>Night Thoughts on Jerusalem.</b></span></div>
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">Reflections on Bob Ellis's <i>Goodbye Jerusalem.</i> (1997)</span></div>
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">I wasn’t going to buy it. I knew it would infuriate me. But then I found
myself with a couple of hours to kill one winter evening in South Yarra, and
there it was in the bookshop. Bob Ellis’s <b><i>Goodbye Jerusalem</i></b>. It
had just been re-released after some legal entanglement. "Typical!" I
thought and bought it.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">I had first learnt of Bob Ellis in the late Seventies. I knew him, by name
only, as the author of the play <b><i>The Legend of King O’Malley</i></b> and
was surprised when a friend assured me that he was regarded as a <b><i>genius</i></b>
amongst Sydney's political/intellectual push. "Women want to have his
children." she said.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">As a native of Melbourne, what I found hard to believe was that Sydney <b><i>had</i></b>
a political/intellectual push. In the Seventies, Melbourne, with its Pram
Factory, David Williamson and Tim Burstall; where Jim Cairns had
burnt call-up papers before the massive Vietnam moratorium crowd, with its Flying Trapeze and Last Laugh comedy venues, was where it was<b> <i>at</i></b>.
Adelaide came a close second with its Arts Festival and hot-panted Premier.
Even Tasmania had credibility as the bushwalking, folk-singing, eco-narcissist
State. Sydney was regarded as the Australian version of Mayor Daley’s Chicago.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">Further inquiries revealed that not only did Sydney have an active, volatile
and incestuous Push but the Push-In-Question was possessed of the extraordinary
conceit that it was the principal if not the <b><i>only</i></b> literary and
political in-crowd in Australia. Indeed, the more one probed into the
psychology of Sydney dwellers, the more it appeared that they collectively
thought Sydney <b><i>was</i></b> Australia.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">Over the next few years, a succession of books, exposes, inquiries and
ABC reports revealed to the rest of Australia the morass that was and had
always been Sydney politics. A strong Irish/Labor Party connection emerged. As
a Victorian, I found this baffling. Hadn’t all the Catholics defected to the
DLP in the Fifties? Did they later all migrate back to the Labor Party? The Sydney Labor party
seemed to have retained its original working class links while Victorian branch
had firmly repositioned itself as a party for the aspiring middle class - Barry
Jones, <i>Dr </i>Moss Cass, <i>Dr </i>Jim
Cairns. There also persisted, in Sydney, strong vertical integration between
local, State and Federal politics while in Victoria and the rest of the
country, there was strict class division on such matters. You would never have
heard a Victorian Chief Justice inquiring about his "little mate" – a
suburban solicitor with scruffy gangland clientele.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">Sydney politics seemed very rough compared to the stately Victorian
scene: branch stacking, punch-ups at meetings, corruption, the thuggery of Premier
Askin - a Gordian knot of police, political, criminal and legal interests.
Sydney, in the swinging international agnostic liberated Seventies, seemed
manacled to its convict past.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">The divergence of views between Sydney dwelling and non-Sydney dwelling
Australians has always been dramatic. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">To New South Welsh eyes, Keating’s
usurpation of Hawke was the rightful accession of the long-serving party
faithful over the politically suspect show-pony. To Victorians and others, it
was Sydney power brokers calling in a debt. The NSW Right had reluctantly
backed Hawke in '83 and now they felt they were owed a Prime Minister.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">As this tale of two cities or, more accurately, two Australias – Sydney
and the rest of the country – unfolded, we also learned more of Ellis, who
began to range beyond his Sydney territory. Soon, the chances of meeting
Ellis were not confined to the Port Jackson area. Ellis was to become a
permanent fixture at the National Screenwriters Conference, the Screen
Producers Conference and almost every other conference where he could be seen
either slumped in a corner scribbling like Gibbon or saggily lurching after
women.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">His regular column in "Encore" magazine has become compulsory
yet infuriating reading for the film industry. Compulsory for its promise of
gossip, infuriating for its contradictions. Though himself one of the best
screen writers in Australia Ellis continually defends, if not champions, appalling
Australian films. He is clearly intelligent and yet staunchly defended, even
eulogised, Keating during his reign. He is a mature man with a historical
overview and, yet, nurtures an undergraduate loathing for conservatives.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;">
<b><span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">And so...</span></b><span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;"> </span><span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">I opened the pages of "Goodbye Jerusalem" with some hope that
this anthemic work might hold some clue into the occult workings of the Sydney
left-wing literary mind. It might even hold a clue to the foremost political
question of the age which is "Why would anyone support the Labor party in
the Nineties?" I was not disappointed. Ellis’s memoir reveals much of the
psychology of the left-wing intellectual: you might even say it leads us into
the very heart of Labor sentimentality.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">First of all the book is predominantly about names - the legal tender of
Sydney society. ("It was a great do. X was there with Y and then Z walked
in. Do you know Q? Fabulous person! Did you know that Q and W used to be an
item? That was before he met M of course. It was when they were both working for
R and he was on with J..." ad nauseam) The<i> names</i> in <b><i>Jerusalem</i></b>
drop like steady rain that has set in for the day. Everybody knows, went to
school with, taught, has got drunk or has slept with everyone else and Ellis
has done it all with everyone. Ellis affects to behold all these connections
and coincidences with profound wonder, "six degrees of separation!",
as if they were in some way accidental, extraordinary, serendipitous,
violations of the laws of probability - rather than the totally predictable and
thoroughly intended outcomes of networking behaviours
within that subculture</span><span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">Running through this Who’s Who and Who’s Been Up Whom of the Left is
Ellis’s acute, sometimes agonising, uncertainty of his own place within the
subculture. The book is described, with some irony, and perhaps genuine regret, <b><i>Memoirs of a Labor Outsider</i></b> a subscript which is hard
to take seriously given that the entire work is a chronicle of his encounters
with heavyweights. And yet here lies a clue to the central dilemma of the
acolyte. No matter how deeply the groupie penetrates the in-crowd, there always
seems to be a more private circle to which they are denied access. Power
elites, like onions, seem to peel down infinitely, always revealing yet another
inner sanctum just beyond the reach of the aspirant. The result is that the
acolyte experiences simultaneously a gratifying sense of belonging and a disappointing sense of
rejection.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">Ellis notes (and possibly identifies with) other excluded Labor party figures: Calwell sitting alone with his conscience in the
church; Daly sent to Coventry for defying Evatt. Ostracism and betrayal are
recurrent themes in this book which presents itself, overall, as a tragedy, It is never made clear, however, exactly <b><i>whose</i></b> tragedy it is,
Ellis's or the Labor Party's.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">In a way, it purports to be the tragedy of Men, particularly Great Men.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">
Like most left-wingers, Ellis disdains the "Great Man" theory of history and yet
<b><i>Jerusalem</i></b> consists mainly of homage to a series of Great Men he
has known, or wishes he had known: men whom he lauds with deep affection if not
outright hero worship. This is mythmaking on a grand scale. Ellis is engaged in
the construction of a pantheon which will show all these men (including, I
assume, himself by association) as great and significant people. Chifley,
Whitlam and Hepworth are dealt with in the fondest possible terms; doted upon
as if they were fathers or grandfathers, indeed the entire book is a epic of,
not so much brotherly, as <i>filial</i> love; a love for venerable,
decent, brilliant, loving, outrageous men - almost a hymn to Men in general but
in particular to father figures, the bigger and more cuddly the better. (Ellis
consistently belittles <i>short</i> men, as if smallness of stature had
been medically proven to be a symptom of meanness in spirit and mind.)</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">Indeed, Ellis seems to see the history of the class struggle as a battle
between male individuals. He regales us not only with great men but brave men,
working men, loyal men, brilliant men, sad men, dead men, insane men and
especially drinking men. Anecdote after anecdote begins "And so we were in
the pub when K walked in and said…." and after a while you begin to
wonder. "Don’t these men have wives? Families? Do they ever see their
children? Do they ever stay home and just watch television?"</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">Women, by contrast, are starkly absent, appearing only as adversaries of
mythic proportions - Bronwyn Bishop the Valkyrie, Pauline Hanson the Harpy - or
as carnal diversions: the shared girlfriends, the groupies, the toys. There is
of course, Mrs Ellis, Anne Brooksbank, always in the background; loved and
revered, supporting, strengthening, guiding. But how do we reconcile Ellis’s
admiration of and dependence on his wife with continual references to his
attempts to grope and seduce other women, references made with astonishing
candour, as if the stumbling failure of the attempts somehow excused them?</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">Larded over this adulation of Men and scant regard for women, is an
adulation of Irishness; a quality which Ellis seems to regard as a genetic quality. At
one point Ellis makes the comment, somewhat ruefully, that while the Irish
settled Australia, the Scots conquered it. Of course, as a Melbourne-bred
descendant of Scottish immigrants, I would, be inclined to agree with that. While the Irish are famed for drinking, singing,
fighting, writing, nostalgia, blowing people up and sorrow, the Scots are
famous for drinking, singing, fighting, engineering, medicine, physics, banking
and dying on the battlefield. Both countries suffered crushing poverty under
the domination of England but, while the Irish starved and drank and sang, the
Scots, cannily built great technical universities, invented electronics and
television and donated to the imperial armies of England whole brigades of
ferocious soldiers who terrified the living crap out of the Zulus and Pathans
who stared wide-eyed through the morning mists to see advancing lines of
tall, red haired men wearing skirts and puffing on what appeared to be flutes
inserted into the rectums of yowling tartan tomcats.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">Thus the Scots, while appearing, oddly, to be willing to die for their
English oppressors, ended up, like Figaro, making their masters dependent on
them - for Scottish education, Scottish acumen and Scottish toughness
("Whatever it takes"). Little wonder that these tough, pragmatic,
sometimes Calvinistic wowsers rose to positions of political and financial
power in Australia. Ellis however, sees the ascendancy of Scots in Australia as
cause for regret and we wonder why. Is Ellis is anti-pragmatic? Or is he just
pro-nostalgic. For, unlike the Irish, the Scots are notably unsentimental about their country of origin.
As my eighty year old Scottish neighbour used to say. "Scotland is the
best country in the world to starve in."</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">The roots of Ellis’s love of Irishness appears to lie in a respect for
things humble and honest, a respect for men who work by hard physical labour.
But how do we reconcile this sentiment with the admiration of power that
elsewhere infuses the writing? Whence the name-dropping? Such confusions riddle
the work. Ellis supports tariffs, yet despises the (Scottish) politicians - McEwan and Menzies - who created them. He affects affection for the uneducated,
and yet his satiric writings snobbishly lampoon John Hewson for having gained
his PhD from <i>Saskatoon</i>. Ellis is simultaneously scared by Keating and at
the same time admiring of him, like a new boy in awe of the Head Prefect.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">Of course the confusion is not Ellis’s alone. The schizoid nature of the
Labor mentality is captured brilliantly in Gerry Connolly’s impersonation of
Keating: "You establishment… scum" (Only a Labor Prime Minister could
regard himself as a not being part of the Establishment.) </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">In the end, Ellis seems to love the Labor Party for its people, not its
policies. As with Keating himself, Ellis’s commitment to the Labor cause seems
to arise not so much from empathy with the underdog as a white-hot hatred of
pedigreed dogs. Ellis's loathing of John Howard goes beyond all reason, seeking
to portray him at best as an Australian Rick Moranis ("Honey I Shrunk the
Deficit") and at worst as an arch fiend. At the same time he reveres the
consummately aloof patrician leader, Whitlam.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">But, putting Ellis’s confused and bathetic sentiments aside, <b><i>Goodbye
Jerusalem</i></b> is also a revelation of the mentality of the Labor party
machine. </span><span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">In particular it is an insight into that machine’s astounding failure to
understand Australian attitudes at any given time over the last fifty years,
illuminating starkly the gulf between the views of the True Believers and
ordinary Australians.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">To begin with, the Party always seems to have been fighting the last
war. We see Chifley, after World War II, campaigning on a "never
again" platform (referring to the Great Depression) just when the country
is about to embark on a period of unprecedented prosperity. How did it take the
Labor Party 30 years after WWII to grasp that there wasn’t going to be another
Depression and refocus their policies accordingly, by which time the prosperity
was, ironically, starting to wane? The result was Whitlam shovelling cash into
education, the arts, and "quality of life" programs, just as the good
times were coming to an end.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">How could Keating’s minders have NOT anticipated that the rapid succession
of reforms under his Prime Ministership - anti-discrimination,
anti-vilification, unfair-dismissal and pro-Asianisation - would start to make
the public jittery and that the High Court Mabo decision – which seemed to
imply that the aboriginal people still legally owned a lot of Australia and white
Australians might have to give it back - would create widespread insecurity. How could they not see that focussing on aborigines as a
downtrodden class, at a time when the recession was creating a new class of
downtrodden whites, would make Pauline Hanson's preposterous proposition - that
aboriginals were better off than poor whites - somehow credible. Timing.
Timing.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">How could Keating’s minders have not seen that he was pushing the
Republic barrow so fast that the wheels were bound to come off. Hawke would
have presented the Republic issue as a matter for all Australians and made them
feel that they had chosen it. Keating basically said, "It’s coming folks,
so you better get used to it."</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">Though he purports to be an outsider, Ellis analyses these towering
failures of common sense and sensitivity like an <b><i>insider</i></b>,
attributing the electoral backlash against Keating to the foibles of
electioneering; to television debates in which he suggests ludicrously that
the <i>studio lighting favoured Howard; </i>to a forged letter scandal which no one even
remembers; finally to the sour-grapes suggestion that Keating wasn’t really trying
anyway. All excuses to avoid the overwhelming reality that the public hated
Labor’s <b><i>policies.</i></b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">What is most striking in this portrayal of Labor thinking is what is NOT
mentioned. Reading this book, no one would imagine that we were in the Age of
Communications. There is not the slightest mention of the impact on society of
computers, cable and satellite TV, global news organisations, the Internet,
street kids, heroin, the loss of the entire TFC industry to Asia,
immigration, the mushrooming litigation/public inquiry/prosecution industry,
the gigantic gamble of sharemarket-based superannuation or the aging of the
Australian population.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #4b2525; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">Rather, what is revealed is a world of intellectuals and politicians
still clinging to age-old divisions, grudges, memories and a Fenian resentment
of the wrongs suffered by long-dead fathers. <b><i>Goodbye Jerusalem</i></b> is
indeed a <i>wake</i> indeed but not for any vision of the future. It is wake for the past: a
lament for the Hibernian Dreamtime written by a writer who is in love with the
idea of writers in love - not with women but with other men; a writer who is
pining for his own Lake Isle of Innisfree and a Celtic twilight where life is
poetry, drink and free love or, at the very least, a time when men could go
down the pub and get away from their wives.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> Ian McFadyen 1997</span></div>
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<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike></div>
Ian McFadyenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15485556320535200135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759415282581131550.post-81851390096873135482015-12-16T21:50:00.000-08:002015-12-16T22:08:47.987-08:00The Baden-Clay judgement is a worry. <div class="MsoNormal">
I have read this judgement and it both odd and
worrying.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It should be noted firstly, that this judgement does not
overturn Baden-Clay’s conviction of murder on any legally technical ground or
any aspect of trial procedure. The judges of the court of appeal make no substantial criticism of the trial
judge’s summing up and yet conclude that the verdict was incorrect. In short, the they have simply ruled that the jury were not justified in making the
finding that they did. This is worry for the whole jury system.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The gist of their argument is that the jury had the option, on the basis of the evidence, of bringing in a verdict of murder or manslaughter and, given that
the forensic evidence did not establish anything in the way of an intention to kill,
they could have and should have opted for the lesser finding of manslaughter.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Much of the judgement is devoted to dismissing the notion
that Baden-Clay’s lying supports a finding of murder. They appear to accept
that the scratches on Baden-Clay’s face were in fact fingernail scratches,
explicitly referring to them as such in para 35 and elsewhere – but suggest that he possibly lied about these scratches and everything else, “in panic.” Indeed, the judgement basically consists of the judges suggesting an alternative scenario to the killing, which they
describe as the “reasonably open hypothesis” that Baden-Clay accidentally
killed his wife and then concealed the body and lied about the circumstances of
her death out of panic.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There is, of course, an immediate problem with this hypothesis
which is that, if Baden-Clay accidentally killed his wife, why would he, when faced with a murder charge, continue to insist on his complete innocence
rather than plead to the lesser charge of manslaughter. It is not really
conceivable that he was in a state of panic during the entire period of his
arrest and trial and, in any case, surely his defence counsel would have advised him to plead to the alternative charge seeing that the circumstantial evidence for murder was so strong.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Oddly, the
judges accept that the jury was entitled to conclude that Baden-Clay
killed his wife, moved her body, deposited it under a bridge and lied about the
scratches on his face. What they refute is that the jury had any right to infer, from his actions and his lies, that he intended to kill her. One of the key elements in reaching this conclusion is that <b>they completely
dismiss the motives </b>that were adduced by the prosecution for the crime – i.e.
Baden-Clay’s affair with Ms McHugh, his promise to Ms McHugh to end his
marriage and his financial difficulties. The reason for rejecting these as
valid motives is <i>never explained</i>: the judges simply state that the “pressures on the appellant (do not provide) a motive <i>in any conventional sense of
the word</i>”. (my Italics). This defies understanding since evidence of an extramarital affair
and the possibility of benefiting financially from a spouse’s death would
normally be accepted in any murder trial as valid motives for murder. For some reason, no reference is made in the judgement, to Allison Baden-Clay's $800,000 life insurance policies which her husband stood to receive in the event of her death. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
However, what is most concerning about the judgement is the sense
that<i> a lack of evidence for murder should properly lead to a finding of
manslaughter</i>. This is based on the erroneous idea that a conviction for manslaughter requires a lower level
of evidence than murder. In fact, it requires a <i>higher</i> level because the defence has to
show that an act which has quite clearly led to the death of the deceased was not
actually intended to bring about that result. In the case of, say, a drunk driver who
kills another person on the road, the lack of intention is clear: the deceased was not known to the accused and the death was clearly attributable to recklessness on the part of the accused and an culpable disregard for others’ safety etc.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In a case, however, where the accused shoots someone in the head who then dies, it is going to
be difficult for them to convince a jury that they did not intend death to
occur. Note that in such cases, while the onus of proof in trials is always on
the prosecution, in this sort of situation the prosecution need only rely on the “reasonable person” test. i.e. any reasonable person shooting
someone in the head must of necessity reasonably expect it to be fatal. In this situation, the
onus of proof would fall onto the defence to prove that the accused shot someone in the head without intending to kill them - a big ask.<br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the Baden-Clay case, such an argument was never presented by the defence because their contention throughout was that Allison Baden-Clay was not
killed by her husband but by person or persons unknown.<br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In dealing with this question of evidence manslaughter, the appeal court judges rely heavily on the fact that
there were no detectable physical injuries on Allison Baden-Clay's body. They see this as providing no evidence
to indicate “an intent to kill or do grievous bodily harm”.<br />
<br />
In fact, I would regard this as evidence to support murder
rather than manslaughter because <i>it is almost impossible to conceive a form of manslaughter
that does not leave obvious physical injuries. </i><br />
<br />
Only such unintentional acts as accidental poisoning, or accidental gassing might kill someone without leaving physical damage. Murder, on the other
hand, because death is intended from the outset and there is a desire to conceal the act, often involves methods of killing that leave no visible signs. What we
know about the death of Allison Baden-Clay is that it happened sometime during
the night or early in the morning, that there was no evidence of a fight or
struggle, that her body showed no signs of overt violence such as broken bones,
head trauma etc, no sounds were heard by neighbours (except for one
inconclusive report of a scream) and the children did not wake. The judges seem to feel that this lack of physical evidence in the home and on the body seems to somehow justify a finding of unintentional killing.<i> </i>I would maintain that it suggests exactly the opposite. The state of the evidence does not
suggest something like a violent physical altercation that resulted unexpectedly
in death: it suggests an act that was carried out in silence and with some level of consideration if not actual planning.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the end, this judgement does not overturn the conviction
on any technical legal grounds. What the appeal judges seem to have done is to re-interpret
the evidence and offer a possible alternative explanation for the killing of
Allison Baden-Clay and then conclude that, given the inherent ambiguities, the jury should have found for a lesser charge of unlawful killing –
i.e. manslaughter. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is worrying because overturning the decision of a jury
is no light matter. It is not the role of appeal courts to reverse the verdicts
of jury trials unless there has been some clear breach of legal principles, misdirection by the trial judge or some complete misunderstanding of some vital piece of evidence. In this
case the jury had the choice of bringing in a verdict of murder or
manslaughter and in the end <i>unanimously </i>decided on murder because, given the
motives that had been suggested and the absence of any evidence for an
accidental killing, murder was the more probable scenario.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In this case the court of
appeal has set themselves up as an alternative jury and delivered their own
verdict.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The irony of this judgement is that, at the end of the day, if there is no evidence
that Baden-Clay intentionally killed his wife, and no evidence that he killed
her accidentally then he should have been acquitted.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
Ian McFadyenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15485556320535200135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759415282581131550.post-4547045245125754232015-12-12T06:59:00.004-08:002015-12-12T06:59:56.116-08:00The question of “legalising” drugs<br /><div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p> </o:p>We frequently hear calls for the legalisation or
decriminalisation of drugs. The arguments are usually the same: criminalisation
hasn’t worked, the “war on drugs” has failed and we should be considering “harm
minimisation” programs rather than arrests and convictions.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some people
advocate simply decriminalising possession for personal use; others believe all
drugs should be legally available.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course when people talk about legalising drugs, they are
talking about the drugs that are currently illegal, not the medicinal pharmaceuticals
that we use every day. These drugs are “legal” but not legal in the sense that
the advocates of legalisation mean of being able to be manufactured and sold at
will.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ironically, these so-called "legal" drugs are strictly regulated. Drugs must be tested for years and pass rigorous
tests before they are allowed to be marketed. When they are sold, unless they
are almost completely harmless like aspirin or Paracetamol, they must be prescribed
by a doctor and dispensed by a chemist. Those regulations are backed up by a system of legal
liability. If a person suffers detrimental side-effects from a drug they can
sue. If the chemist dispensed the wrong drug or the wrong dosage, they can be
sued; if the doctor prescribed the wrong drug, they can be sued: and if they were
not at fault – the drug company itself can be sued, and many have been - in multi-million
dollar legal actions.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course when people talk about “legalising all drugs” they
are not suggesting that pharmaceuticals in general should be freely available
for anyone to manufacture, sell and purchase over the counter without any sort
of controls.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What they are talking about is legalising so-called recreational
drugs and this is what leads us into an absurdity.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Legalising so-called “recreational”
drugs, would lead to a ridiculous double standard where, to get a blood-pressure
or cholesterol drug, you had to go to a doctor and a chemist, but you could buy
drugs with known side-effects and the even the potential for a fatal overdose
over the counter - without any need for a prescription or any sort of medical examination.
It would also mean that people could manufacture these drugs in any sort of
back-yard lab they wished and not be breaking the law. And of course there
would be no legal recourse in the case of side-effects or death. There would be
grounds to sue either the dealer or the drug manufacturer as they would have no
duty-of-care to begin with.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some advocates suggest that, if recreational drugs were
legalised, then major drug companies might start to manufacture them,
guaranteeing the quality and ensuring that they were “safe.” This, of course,
is a pipe-dream. The drugs that currently
illegal could <i>never</i> obtain
certification by the FDA or TGA for public use for the simple reason that they’re
NOT safe. There is no safe version of them and even if one could determine a “safe
dose” of these drugs, you could not monitor their usage unless you went down
the path of having people get a prescription specifying the correct dosage from
their GP. However, no GP would ever prescribe these drugs because they have no
medical value.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The question for a pharmaceutical company that was even thinking
about manufacturing these drugs would be how they could protect themselves
from the inevitable law-suits when people had adverse reactions. To put it
simply, no drug company would be crazy enough to manufacture the drugs that
currently illegal because they would be wiped out in litigation that made the
billion dollar James Hardie asbestos case look like pocket-money.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Similarly, whereas chemists and supermarkets are happy to
have headache tablets, and hay-fever capsules on their shelves, available
without prescription, they would never be stupid enough to sell marijuana, MBA,
opiates, methamphetamines or anything else, because they would be sued the first
time someone commits suicide, lapses into schizophrenia, turns violent or
depressed, or even just become an addict. Not even a corner shop would risk it. Remember that a pub or a bar that serves alcohol to a person who is already intoxicated can be sued if that person subsequently causes a serious car accident so retailers can be held responsible for the results of intoxicants they sell.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The result is that even if you “legalise” illegal drugs, the
scenario under which they are made and distributed will be almost exactly the
same as what exists now - people growing or synthesising the drugs in a kind of
cottage industry and selling them anonymously either in person or over the Net with
no legal liability. Drug takers will never have any guarantee as to the purity
or safety of these drugs because no legal safety standard or method of
regulating their manufacture can ever exist.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, in the end, removing criminal sanctions against manufacturing, transporting, selling or possessing drugs may stop people going to prison, but it is never going to reduce the instances of death by
overdose or suicide, mental illness including depression and schizophrenia,
family breakdown, relationship breakdown and career breakdown. The current laws
against drug cultivation and synthesis are the <i>same</i> laws that prevent Pfizer, Sigma or Bayer from marketing a drug
that causes detrimental side-effects. Similarly, the laws that prevent the
distribution and sale of illegal drugs are the <i>same </i>laws that prevent people from selling foods with botulism or toys
with toxic chemicals in them. How could we - why would we - exempt one
particular set of products from those laws, especially when the harm they do is so manifest, so visible, and greater than all the other dangerous products combined?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Ian McFadyenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15485556320535200135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759415282581131550.post-1381836156895724552015-10-26T18:34:00.003-07:002015-10-26T18:34:37.492-07:00At last! The long awaited sequel - COLD WAR II - The Russian Empire Strikes Back.
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">As we celebrate the return of the Back to the
Future franchise, a new Star Wars movie and a host of new editions of computer games by for the most long awaited sequel of all:</span></div>
<h2 style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
Cold War II – The Russian Empire Strikes
Back.</h2>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><i>The Australian</i> today, accurately if somewhat belatedly,
warns us that “we could be returning to the Cold War dangers.”</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Could be. Except that it’s already happening.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The Cold War of the Fifties and Sixties was less about the
US and the USSR building up competing vast stockpiles of nuclear weapons and
more about the economic and military cultivation of client states around the world.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In two decades after WW2, developing nations “shopped” for
aid, playing the superpowers off against one another; offering allegiance to
whichever would provide them with the most money and, more importantly, the most military assistance to to either protect the government from insurgency or to arm the insurgency itself. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Competing with Russian influence in the Third World first saw
the US initiate the Marshall Plan which gave 13 billion dollars to rebuild
Europe (and to forestall a communist takeover in Greece and other countries),
establish the OEEC and, in the Kennedy era, set up USAID. That scheme has continued to spends tens of billions of dollars annually. USAID was partly to
relieve poverty and enable economic development in the poorer world, but was also an attempt to
stop nations becoming of Soviet client states. Naturally, the USSR not only refused to participate in the Marshall Plan but actively campaigned against
US aid schemes - while at the same time running similar
schemes of its own.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">This process of creating a network of client states saw
the US and USSR engage in a number of proxy wars. </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The Vietnam war, where North Vietnam and the
Viet Cong were funded and armed by Moscow, was just such a war. The US was there in person: the USSR was there by proxy.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late Eighties,
that great competition ran out of steam for a while. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b>Now it’s back with
Vladimir Putin determined to rebuild a Russian Empire.</b></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Putin has already annexed Crimea and continues to arm and
fund rebel militias in eastern Ukraine, hoping that that country will be split
in two and the east returned to the Russian fold. He has also expertly
intervened in Syria with the dual purpose of propping up the Assad regime and
wiping out ISIS. This is, of course, at odds with the US and other countries’
aim of removing both Assad <i>and</i> ISIS. Putin, with no regard for the West, has commenced bombing
the "moderate" rebels in Syria to secure Assad’s position (which is quite shaky)
and, having done that, will then work with the Assad regime to attack ISIS. This
is a win-win for Russia - preserving a valued pro-Russian state and reducing the
risk from militant Islam which is a much greater for Russia than the West.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">It is also a lose-lose for the US and the West in general.
Under Putin’s scheme Assad remains in power and he gets the credit for doing
what America couldn’t – defeating or curtailing ISIS. Putin becomes the <i>hero of
Syria. </i>And being a hero is what Putin is all about.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Now, following the US troop withdrawal, the government of Afghanistan
is nervously looking to Russia for possible military assistance against the
Taliban. One can only imagine the satisfaction it would give the Russians to
take revenge on the Taliban since it was they who drove the Soviets out of Kabul
in 1989. </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Obama has ordered
US troop withdrawals be halted but this may be too little too late.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Maintaining a hold on Syria and re-attaching Afghanistan as
a Soviet puppet state could provide Vladimir Putin with a greater Christmas
present that he could have ever hoped for.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">As Tom Lehrer sang "Who's next?"</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<br /></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Ian McFadyenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15485556320535200135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759415282581131550.post-73374571933918059312015-09-30T20:06:00.002-07:002015-09-30T20:06:47.302-07:00Freedom of Religion vs the Rights of the Child.
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Today, in <i>The Australian</i>, the Archbishop of Melbourne defended the circulation of a letter in Catholic schools in Tasmania that outlined the church's opposition to gay marriage, by saying it was all about Freedom of Religion. However, Freedom of Religion means having the right to practice any religion you choose. It does not mean having the right to impose your religion on others. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Except the Archbishop thinks it does, at least when it comes to children. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Indoctrinating children in religious faith is the main function of religious schools. But how does this tally with the general principles of education?</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In
the 19<sup>th</sup> century, Britain and many other countries implemented
systems of universal, free, compulsory education. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">There
were several reasons for this In the case of Britain, which
is the model for Australia, they were:</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></div>
<br />
<ol style="direction: ltr; list-style-type: lower-alpha;">
<li style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;"><div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
economic development of the nation. Britain feared it was lagging in the science
and technology race against other European nations.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></div>
</li>
<li style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;"><div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
removal of the class system. It was regarded as a social evil that the children
of the wealthy were educated while the lower classes remained illiterate and
unskilled. Universal education, it was believed, would allow people of ability
to transcend class barriers.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></div>
</li>
<li style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;"><div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
eradication of other social evils such as alcoholism and sexual incontinence.
It was believed that educated people would lead more moral lives.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></div>
</li>
<li style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;"><div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
intellectual and spiritual enhancement of the individual. It was believed that the intellectual abilities of every person should be fully realised and
that no one should be uninformed about the world, or denied access to the great
works of literature, historical accounts, appreciation of art or understanding
of science achievements.</span></div>
</li>
</ol>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">These
aims, which are both social, economic and personal still inform educational
policies in the Western world albeit with slightly different emphases. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It
would be fair to say that (b) has more or less been achieved in that it is now
possible for someone from a working class background to become Prime Minister
and (c) is still as a work in progress in that alcohol and drug use are
still mainly (though not at all exclusively) the province of people at the
unskilled and uneducated end of the social scale.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> (a) </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and
(b) remain the active justifications for general, free and compulsory
education. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">To
them I would add another justification for education: (e) the Right to
Knowledge.</span></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Human
beings are unique amongst the creatures on this planet in that they have
a vast store of shared, accumulated knowledge that is stored outside their
brains in libraries, databases, galleries, images, recordings and other
repositories – a giant collective memory which is accessed and added to constantly
by the entire population. This store of knowledge is <i>collectively
owned</i> and is, in a sense, the inheritance of every child born on the planet.</span></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>It
is a challenge to any social theorist or police maker to justify how one person
should have access to the entirety of this vast store of information and
understand, and another not have.</b></span></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Which
brings us to the issue of religious schools.</span></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
existence of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East can be largely traced to
religious education. In countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan many children -
boys only of course - undergo an education in the madrassas which consists of rote
learning of the Koran. Not much else is taught.<a href="file:///I:/Religious%20Education%20and%20the%20Rights%20of%20the%20Child.docx" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span></span></span></a> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In
the West we deplore this because such an education clearly does not equip the
child for a comprehensive and mature view of reality world; it lessens their
ability understand the wider world and make decisions to their own
advantage. That of course is of no concern to the religious teachers. Self-actualisation
and self-determination is not the primary aim of religious
schools - their aim is the perpetuation of the religion itself. It is a
fundamental principle of many religions that the individual is not as important
as the faith.<a href="file:///I:/Religious%20Education%20and%20the%20Rights%20of%20the%20Child.docx" name="_ftnref2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span></span></span></a><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Yet
while we disapprove of the madrassas of the Middle East, we defend the right of
Australians to send their children to Jewish Catholic and Islamic religious schools.
While, unlike the madrassas, our religious schools do include a standard academic curriculum that runs
alongside the religious teaching, these schools </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">still
have the inherent problem that they emphasise one religion and it associated cultural observances and attitudes, as being of overriding importance.</span></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It is often asked how schools which exist for the prime purpose of
reinforcing a particular religious belief can be compatible with the wider aims of
education which are to offer a comprehensive view of society and
teach an understanding of the scientific method. The answer is that they are
not.</span></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Recently
there was a scandal involving allegations of sexual abuse against the principal
of a Jewish school. This school catered to an ultra-Orthodox sect called the Adass,
a kind of Jewish version of the Amish, which shields children from almost all
contact with the outside world: no televisions, tablets, sex education or,
indeed, contact with the opposite sex at all. Oddly enough, while news reports
focussed luridly on the allegations of sexual abuse, the wider
abuse of raising children in a highly traditional culture that ill-prepares
them for any engagement with the world outside the sect is not considered to be
a problem. Indeed the Adass community, like the Amish, is regarded as being sort of <i>cute</i>. Indeed, the members of the sect do seem to have a
certain hippie- like contentment, as you might expect people living in a kind
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fiddler on the Roof </i>theme park
but it’s an upbringing that does little to prepare young people for life, should
they ever leave the community, which of course many do.</span></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The issue here is a fundamental question of human rights. Do parents, or
other adults, have the right to restrict the education and information
available to children in order to perpetuate their own lifestyle in the next generation? The answer to
this can only be “No.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The result of
limiting education, or withholding knowledge or understanding from young people can only be
negative, both for the individual – as it denies them their due inheritance of knowledge – and for the society as a
whole – because it perpetuates and fosters myths, prejudices, fears and
intolerances.</span></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">If
that seems prejudicial towards religion, ask this question:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>what ideas, principles and attitudes are taught in the Islamic, Catholic schools and other religious schools that are of
benefit to the wider society? There are plenty of teachings and beliefs that cause problems for others - opposition to abortion or even contraception, the notion that homosexuality is sinful, that sex in general is sinful, hatred of other
religions, creationism and so on. Now list the teachings that are of benefit to society as a whole? They are conspicuously absent.</span></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The problem is that religions, in privileging their dogma over the wider body of
scientific knowledge and mandating that obedience to the religion as more important
than the intellectual growth of the individual or any benefit of the
wider society, violates the three of the five aims of public education I listed above. It fails to raise the general level of intelligence of society as a whole, or to develop
to their fullest the intellectual abilities of the individual, or to grant open access to
the accumulated store of human knowledge. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">This
week there was an issue over a letter circulated in Catholic schools which
outlined the church’s opposition to gay marriage. It justified the opposition
by making ignorant, insulting remarks about gay people. The Tasmanian Greens
have alleged that the church as violated the anti-discrimination laws. </span></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">To return to the current Tasmanian issue: in
defending a document which seems to makes ignorant and defamatory comments about gay people, the Archbishop Melbourne quotes the judgement of the
Canadian Supreme Court in the Quebec “Loyola” case. In that case a Catholic
school found itself required by government legislation to teach a general “ethics
and religion” course that gave an overview of all religions which emphasised that
no faith was any more “true” than any other. Naturally, since the entire
purpose of a Catholic school is to teach that their faith IS the one true
faith, they objected. The Supreme Court upheld their objection saying that parents
are "entitled" to transmit their religious beliefs to their children.
It is a disappointing judgement because, by only a slight extrapolation (not a total reduction ad absurdum) it could
justify any form of teaching, no matter how dangerous and discriminatory, if it
were deemed to be “religious.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus teaching
children that Jews are evil or Africans are sub-human is permitted if those
claims are held to be part of someone's "faith."</span></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The unqualified assertion of a "right to transmit" must clearly be subject to some sort of limitation. The concepts that are being “transmitted” by parents must be
subject to some sort of reasonability or social benefit test and the potential damages from that "transmission" must be recognised. We do not accept for a moment that people have the right to perform
genital mutilation in the name of their religion or indeed inflict any sort of
physical modification of children so why do we allow what is often the modification of their
minds? Religious ideas are not purely abstract concepts: they have, intentionally, strong emotions consequences. Instilling fears, illusions, empirically unprovable assertions and pejorative attitudes to certain groups in society has the capacity to produce crippling emotional states of anxiety, guilt, insecurity and shame? What is the effect on a gay Catholic teenager reading a pamphlet that says "gay people are not whole people"? </span></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Freedom
of religion is a fundamental right, but the rights of children not to be indoctrinated,
and not to be intellectually and emotionally damaged by religious education,
outweighs it. Children are not simply clones of, nor possessions of, their
parents to be raised as carbon copies or in any way the parent
fancies. On the contrary, parenthood is a set of responsibilities paramount amongst which is to give the child an education that will afford them, as adults,
both the opportunities and the capacity to make their own choices about
everything - <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>including religion
or freedom from it.</span></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="mso-element: footnote-list;">
<br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<div id="ftn1" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<a href="file:///I:/Religious%20Education%20and%20the%20Rights%20of%20the%20Child.docx" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span><span style="font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: Consolas;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was evidenced to me in a minor way a couple
of weeks ago when I was in a taxi in Sydney. After listening to a strange
incantation coming from the radio I asked the driver what he was listening to
and he said he was listening to the Koran. This led onto a discussion about
religions during which, at one point he asked “So when was Jesus alive?”
Slightly amused I told him, it was 2015 years ago as current year date
suggests. He was fascinated, having never known that the western calendar was
dated from the putative birth of Jesus.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn2" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<a href="file:///I:/Religious%20Education%20and%20the%20Rights%20of%20the%20Child.docx" name="_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span><span style="font-family: Consolas; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: Consolas;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The
same paradox is inherent in Socialism where the State is more important than
the individual citizen even though the State is a collection of individuals.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Ian McFadyenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15485556320535200135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759415282581131550.post-45510213710739327512015-09-25T22:26:00.003-07:002015-09-25T22:26:36.919-07:00Jihad déjà vu: Islamic State and the Communist Scare of the Fifties.
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">It’s not uncommon when reading some historical account of the
1950s to come across references to “anti-communist hysteria” or, in the
Australian context, fears of “Reds under the bed”. These terms tend to imply that,
during the Cold War, there was an irrational fear of communist infiltration in
the western world which led to the imposition of intrusive surveillance
measures, draconian legislation and violations of both personal and political
freedom. They tend to be used by people who either were communist
sympathisers during that period (and perhaps still are) or were not actually
alive at the time.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">To get some perspective on what the level of threat actually
was, it would be fair to say that the “communist menace”
of the Fifties was not unlike the threat of radical Islam today.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The reality is that goal of the International Communism in the Fifties </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">was identical to the current
goal of Al Qaeda and Islamic State: that is to say - world domination. The aim of I.S.
is to establish a worldwide Islamic caliphate. The aim of the U.S.S.R. was to
establish a worldwide union of socialist republics. Of course, like I.S., the U.S.S.R.
could not simply invade other countries and impose a communist regime on them (though it would do so later to stop them becoming UNcommunist) so its strategy was to preach the doctrine of Marxism as
far and as wide as possible and cultivate revolutionary cells
in as many countries as possible. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The m.o. of international communism was therefore remarkably like that of its
counterpart today.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Like I.S., the Communist Party especially targeted young people
in spreading of its ideology since young people tend to be idealistic, already resentful of authority
and not too well informed. Both organisations had and have their sacred texts:
the Koran for I.S. and </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Das
Kapital </span></i><span style="font-family: Calibri;">and the Communist Manifesto for the Socialists. Both movements also promoted their philosophy via a promise of Paradise. For I.S. it is a paradise in the afterlife; for Communists it was a paradise
on Earth.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Both movements also employed different strategies to foment
revolution depending on the type of society they were targeting and the degree
of impetus towards an actual revolution. The Soviets sent organisers, agitators and propagandists into the western democracies to
assist with party structuring and operation. They trained the locals in recruiting techniques, and funded the costs of printing booklets and pamphlets,
paid for office rental and costs of travel – often to Moscow for "advanced instruction." In the
developing world, where societies were already simmering on the brink of revolt, they
provided arms and military advisors to assist the overthrow of governments. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In the same way I.S. and Al Qaeda jihadists adopt multiple tactics
to advance their aims. They recruit soldiers whom they train in Afghan camps to
conduct military invasions of provinces in Syria and Iraq, while at the same time
creating bases of sympathisers in the western democracies to provide financial
and other assistance for those militants. In moderate Moslem countries they
cultivate the growth of radical Islamist cells and a return to sharia law and in non-Moslem countries they
send proselytisers to encourage the “lone wolf” martyrdom attacks and provide
instructions for bombs and other terror weapons via the Internet.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In the end however, what communism and radical Islam have most in common, is that they aim to impose totalitarian order on the world – to establish a system of government where individual choice is impossible and dissent illegal. There is thus no real difference between an imam at a mosque exhorting young Moslems to wage jihad and a university lecturer telling students that a Marxist-Leninist society that Socialist is a moral responsibility.</span></div>
</span>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Of course, at the moment, radical Islam seems to present a more immediate
threat than the Communist Party of Australia who, as far as we know, has never
beheaded anyone or crashed an airliner. But the fear of Communism in that
period of the Cold War was not unjustified.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In the 20 years following World War 2, communist or
communist supported uprisings occurred in Malaya, Indonesia, Cuba, China,
Korea, Congo, Vietnam, The Philippines, Ethiopia, South Yemen, </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Mozambique, Burma and Sudan, amongst others.
Some of these, such as those in Malaya and Indonesia were overcome, others
ended in stalemate, partition or the rise of dictators; others continue to the
present day. It is true that many if not most of these uprisings were against brutal
dictators and/or exploitative and inhumane colonial masters. The problem for the democracies however was that with each overthrow of a colonial
dictatorship – regardless of how justified - the international influence the of the U.S.S.R. grew.
Whereas the radical Islamic presents a threat of random localised acts of
violence, the mingling of communism with nationalist and independence movements threatened to
strengthen an expansionist regime that possessed thousands of nuclear arms and intent on ruling
the world. What such a world might be like was graphically illustrated in the swift and brutal
response of the Soviets to Hungary and
Czechoslovakian when they sought to declare independence from the Soviet bloc.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">However the fear of Communism was not just that it was tool for increasing the political influence of a ruthless, well-armed, </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">totalitarian regime. It was seen as a threat
for a far more subtle reason – the very fact of its superficial plausibility.
The actions of jihadists - martyrdom, mass murder, destruction of artefacts, beheadings
and enslavements - are so alienating to most people that only the alienated, the ignorant, the stupid and the psychopathic are drawn to it. Socialism
on the other hand weaves a subtle web of persuasion, appealing to humanitarianism,
pacifism and notions of natural justice. The great fear during the Cold War
was that, even given the violation of human rights, the mass executions, the
labour camps, the appalling economic mismanagement and deaths of millions
through famine in U.S.S.R and China, many Westerners would continue to be
seduced by the childish idealism of the Marxism. And indeed, the fact that in
spite of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the failure of Cuba and the corruption
of nearly all communist states into brutal autocracies, there are still people - academics, artists, broadcasters and public intellectuals - in this country who tacitly or explicitly espouse
and endorse Socialist doctrine, and that many of the illogical tenets of Marxist theory still influence public discourse in this
country, shows that those fears of 60 years ago, were not unfounded.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Ian McFadyenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15485556320535200135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759415282581131550.post-36922487145701895732015-09-21T18:13:00.003-07:002015-09-21T18:13:39.226-07:00Requiem for a Lightweight. The end of Tony Abbott
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">There is probably no Australian Prime minister except for
Billy Hughes and William McMahon whose passing will be less mourned than Tony
Abbott.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Someone on Facebook commented that Abbott “Should never have
been Prime Minister” and in a sense that’s true. Abbott’s rise to the position
was more or less accidental.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Abbott’s ascendancy was due in the first place to a
blunder by the Liberals during the Howard years: they assumed that when it
came time for Howard to retire, Peter Costello would automatically step up as
leader. When Costello declined, they found themselves without a backup plan. At
that stage Turnbull was a potential leader but as yet he was too new and too
Left for most of the party.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The second mistake the Liberals made was to assume that
Howard’s electoral success was due to his being a moral conservative therefore,
they reasoned, falsely, they needed a successor who was also a moral
conservative. What they failed to realise was that Howard was a successful <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">despite </i>being a moral conservative not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">because </i>of it. Unlike Howard, Abbott did
not have the political talent to offset his somewhat rigid personal views with
good government.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The third factor which led to Abbott’s success was the
lamentable performance of the Rudd/Gillard/Government – a gift to any
Opposition. Rudd, had he remained PM for a full term would have had no trouble
dealing with Abbott but his abrasive personal style led him to be replaced by
the hapless, clueless, Julia Gillard. To quote the bitter Bill Hayden in 1983 “a drover’s
dog could have won the election” against Gillard. As it was, Abbott only
outpolled Gillard marginally in 2010 (remember that the Coalition won
more seats in that election: Gillard only became PM because Oakeshott and
Windsor betrayed their electorates and backed her.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then, of course, the last minute deposing of
Gillard and re-installation of Rudd made the 2013 election a walkover for
the Coalition. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Abbott’s becoming PM was the thus result of incompetence by
both the Liberals and Labor.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Of course, people who don’t look very Prime Ministerial at
the outset can grow into the role. Howard was regarded very much as a joke
throughout the Eighties but became one of Australia’s most successful Prime
Ministers. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Not so with Abbott.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Abbott, without intending to be, was a divisive Prime
Minister managing to achieve the almost impossible task of having more people
hate him than Howard. Most Abbott haters attribute their animosity to his
policies and what they perceived as a raft of personal prejudices. Neither of
those factors however really fully explain the antipathy.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Firstly, Abbott’s policies, such as “stopping the boats”
were not materially different in their intention (and actually more humane)
than Labor’s Malaysian and PNG Solutions which were devised for the
same reason – to stop people-smuggling. The perception of a personal traits
such a homophobia and misogyny was also, if not completely false, exaggerated. The
misogyny label in particular was just a slur created by Gillard desperately grasping
for something to cloak her own disastrous performance. Anger over Abbott’s
reluctance to legislate for marriage equality also ignores the fact that Gillard
refused to legalise gay marriage though she had the numbers to do so. The
explanation in both cases is the same: Abbott and Gillard were both afraid of
the conservative elements of their parties.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I believe the antipathy to Abbott stems from problems that are both deeper
and more superficial than policies and attitudes. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Firstly, the superficial.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Abbott, without a doubt, had/has
the worst speaking style of any Prime Minister ever recorded in Australia. William McMahon
was derided for his squeaky voice which became shrill when he became agitated
but even he sounded relatively normal compared to Abbott’s odd one-word-at–a-time
speech pattern. Prior to become Prime Minister Abbott had a habit of grunting
between each word:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I – ugh – don’t –
ugh –think – ugh –we – ugh –should – ugh –consider – ugh –action – ugh –of –
ugh –that – ugh –nature – ugh – “ etc. As PM, he managed to remove the grunt
but was still incapable of delivering an English sentence <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in one breath. </i>He continued to speak one word at a time with tiny
pauses between. I. Want. To. Assure. Australians. That. We. Will. Continue. To. etc.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">This style of speaking is hard to listen to and disconcerting to the
listener. It gives the impression the speaker is actually thinking about
each word as they speak, rather than having a sentence already prepared in
their brain . It suggests they have trouble formulating their thoughts,
are unsure of what they’re saying and lack conviction. What is particularly odd is that, from all reports, Abbott doesn’t talk like this in private,
meaning that for some unknown reason he adopts an oddly formal approach
when speaking as a politician, not unlike the tone you might adopt when talking to someone who doesn't understand English, or is deaf. This not only comes across as condescending, but also makes the voters feel as if they're never seeing the real person.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The first thing that was refreshing about the election of
Malcolm Turnbull was to hear a Prime Minister who speaks fluently and
confidently as if he were engaged in a normal conversation.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In addition to the odd, halting, speech, there are the
problems of Abbott’s walk, in which he rolls his shoulders like a
punch-drunk prize fighter, a scarily reptilian smile and a strange, mechanical, almost robotic
laugh that is actually unnerving. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Much as we might disapprove, it is an inescapable fact that appearances count in modern
politics. Speaking styles, body language and facial expressions very
much determine how people respond to political candidates and leaders. A single idiosyncrasy can be
acceptable, even endearing, but Abbott’s combination of vocal, facial and
bodily oddities simply made him uncomfortable to watch or listen
to. It was unnatural, unrelaxed and often, as in his long silent stare, just weird. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The deeper, matter concerns the erratic quality of his decision making. Personally I support restoring the old Knights and Dames
honours system because I think Australia’s honours system is an embarrassment. Contrary to the protests of the
republicans, knights have nothing to do with monarchy per se. There is no
reason why you can’t have a republican knight: the term simply means a hero of the
realm. The term Dame is more problematic in being gendered and having nothing like the same heroic connotations. If we hate the idea of titles like “Sir” and “Dame” we should
also abolish “Dr”, “Mr” and “Professor” – but I digress. The point is I was
happy to see the honours system restored. So what does Abbott do? He grants a
knighthood to a duke – a duke being already six rungs above a knight in
heraldic order. And not just your common or garden duke but a royal consort who has the rank of <em>Prince</em>. It was an act so
unjustified, so ill-advised, so destructive to his own cause as to almost cast
doubts on Abbott’s sanity.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Lastly there is the issue of the togs. Laced through his whole career there is Abbott’s
obsession with sports and fitness. While his involvement in sports was
initially seen as a positive – attesting to his youth, energy and simpatico
with the outdoorsy Australian culture - there are serious questions about
whether a person should still be running triathlons <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">once they’ve become Prime Minister. </i>For a start, most voters would
be justified in asking how he had the time? Isn’t being PM pretty much a 20
hour a day job.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While we accept John
Howard going out for his brisk morning walk prior to tackling the day’s agenda,
continued involvement in strenuous sport seems to suggest that the individual
has not fully committed to the demands of office.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">On top of this, if you are a politician who is always drawn by
cartoonists wearing Speedos, and lampooned for always being on a bike or
a surfboard, when you are criticised for being too much of a jock, a
bloke, and a man’s man - <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">maybe it’s time
to cut back on those activities. </i>Abbott’s refusal to change his
image a little – to appear less of a sportsman and a little more cultured,
cerebral and sensitive – could be seen as a <em>kind</em> of integrity, a refusal to
compromise oneself just for the sake of image but with Abbott I doubt that
is the case. It was not an expression of integrity: just a kind of dumbness. Abbott simply
didn’t get it.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
Abbott will be
remembered as a strange, slightly socially inept man, uncertain about his masculinity and even his identity, who found himself Prime Minister by default, never really understanding the social and
economic challenges of the 21<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">st</span></sup> century, too reliant on support from the conservative wing of his party and simply not having the breadth of vision and combination of intellectual and pragmatic skills that make for a statesman.</div>
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
</div>
Ian McFadyenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15485556320535200135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759415282581131550.post-41257911262667914052015-09-07T18:53:00.005-07:002015-09-07T18:53:50.485-07:00Syrian Refugees. Why do we treat the sympton but not the disease?
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In the last twelve months, Australia’s relatively minor
problem with unauthorised boat arrivals has been put graphically in perspective by
the massive influx of refugees from Africa and the Middle East into Europe. The
most visible component of this tide of arrivals is the wave of refugees fleeing
the civil war in Syria. Some 4 million people have fled the war since it began and now much attention is being paid to
the problem of how to deal with this mass of displaced humanity.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Germany has stepped up and agreed to take a large number of
these refugees – perhaps because its economy is the strongest in Europe and also, perhaps,
because its birth-rate is slow and it could actually do with a population
boost, especially in the unskilled sector. Other countries are not so ready, willing or able to
accommodate a wave of migrants and the burden on social welfare that it would entail.
In 2014, a survey in France revealed that 80% of the refugees who had arrived
ten years earlier were still unemployed and living on government benefits.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">On top of the strain which a large number of new arrivals
places on the economies, housing capacity and educational facilities of
European countries, there is of course the overriding problem that accepting
refugees <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">en masse</i> will dramatically increase the number of people seeking to relocate to the safety of
Europe.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">What is astonishing about the entire situation is that, despite
the immense problems of resettling the flood of refugees and the horrors of the ongoing humanitarian
crisis in Syria, the western world remains resolutely resolved not to intervene
in the war itself.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In other words, Europe would rather spend billions of Euros
accommodating fleeing Syrians than spend considerably less committing troops to
end the war that is creating the crisis.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">If the leaders of Europe are looking for a solution to the
refugee situation, the answer is not in some far reaching agreement to share
the responsibility for resettlement, the solution is simply as follows.</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">1.</span><span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Send a multinational force of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>80,000 troops into Syria.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">2.</span><span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Wipe out ISIS completely.</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;">
</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">3.</span><span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Demobilise government forces (due to defections there are less that 100,000 soldiers still fighting) arrest Assad and put him on trial for war crimes
as the UN did with Milosovic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">4.</span><span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Institute democratic elections in the country.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">This would require the major members of the EU, Britain,
France and Germany to provide contingents of around 10,000 troops each. The smaller
members would provide contingents of between 1000 and 5000 depending on their size.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">It would be essential that the operation NOT be under the
control of the UN because that body is completely ineffective at conducting any
sort of military action and the US should also not be involved except in providing air support because it is hopeless
at conducting ground wars. The main role of the US would be to help Iraq to deal
with the IS forces that would flee over the border into that country. Without
access to their home base the Iraqi branch of IS would be relatively helpless.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Why would this action succeed? Because there would be enough
troops to complete the job quickly. Every war that has been conducted in the
Middle East in the last two decades has been marred by insufficient troop
numbers resulting in prolonged conflict with inconclusive outcomes. They have
also been hamstrung by having to be disguised as “support” or “advisory” actions
with forces wasting time and energy supposedly “training” the local
incompetent troops. The purpose of a large expeditionary force would be to quickly
disarm all three combatants in the war – the government, the democratic rebels,
the Islamist rebels and essentially take control of the country. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">It would also succeed because, unlike Afghanistan, Syria
does not have an impenetrable mountain range where the Islamists can hole up
indefinitely to emerge when the forces leave, nor is there a country next door
to offer covert support to the rebels (yes, we’re talking about you Pakistan). In fact Syria's neighbours all hate Assad.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Such an action would also limit Iran's power in the region by removing Hezbollah from their position of influence and even have a collateral benefit in sending an important message to Vladimir Putin
that if Europe joins forces as a single entity, it is a force greater than
Russia.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Of course NONE OF THIS WILL HAPPEN.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">So why will the west not intervene quickly and decisively to
end a conflict that is characterised by an endless stream of atrocities and
threatens not only the future of Syria itself but is destabilising the countries
around it?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Because the West has been overtaken and essentially
paralysed by five decades of anti-war polemics and middle class “I don’t want
to get involved/it's not our problem” isolationism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The middle class of the West is
trapped between two contradictory positions (a) that helping refugees escape from a
life-threatening situation is not only admirable and humane but a fundamental
moral responsibility but (b) to take action to <em>remove</em> the life-threatening
situation itself is war-mongering aggression and western imperialism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Thus the democratic countries of Europe will flap and cackle
about how to house a million refugees but not for one moment consider taking
military action to eradicate the factors that are creating those refugees.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">At the same time, while the Left is captive to a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">there are no good wars, imperialism is bad, national sovereignty is inviolable,
blah blah blah </i>doctrine, conservatives are also adverse to any sort of
intervention - but in their case purely out of self-interest.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">While not opposed to war in principle, and
having little or no sympathy for the plight of warring Islamic factions,
conservatives are still smarting from the flack they copped over Iraq and Afghanistan.
Even Vietnam still lurks ghoulishly at the edge of memory in the US and Europe. After
watching the vilification that George W. Bush endured over Iraq, Barak Obama is not the only US
politician who will not even toy with the notion of a ground invasion of Syria. In
Britain there are still people like the monumentally stupid George Galloway
calling for Tony Blair to be tried for war crimes over Iraq. In other
words, saving the Syrians from the brutal forces of Assad and the even more
brutal forces of IS is simply not worth the effort politically. We feel sorry for the Syrians... but not <em>that</em> much. Let them fight it out amongst themselves, see what the outcome is, and then form a strategy. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">So, in the end, for the people of Europe, and the rest of the western world, it is easier just to find
the extra money to house the refugees than to endure the inevitable backlash from the
peace-nuts that will come from mounting a military invasion. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Besides... it’s actually good to have some
refugees to feel sorry for. It makes us feel good about ourselves.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
Ian McFadyenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15485556320535200135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759415282581131550.post-89171631908534078172015-08-14T19:35:00.002-07:002015-08-14T19:35:41.136-07:00Objections to gay marriage are not inexplicable – just dishonest.
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Once again, arguments over gay-marriage in the
government have prompted a McFlurry<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of articles from conservatives, church leaders and other
homophobes opposing gay marriage. Prominent amongst their arguments are cries of “what about the children?” and other dire warnings that
gay marriage will lead to a
breakdown in the concept of marriage itself (like that hasn't already happened), wholesale immorality and the general
destruction of society.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">These arguments conveniently, wilfully and maliciously ignore
that fact that gay couples are ALREADY living together in marriage-like
relationships and are ALREADY raising children despite which, the
total destruction of society has not occurred.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Some homophobes - and let’s be clear, anyone who opposes
gay-marriage IS a homophobe - even point to the fact that gay couples are
already in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">de facto </i>marriages or “civil unions” and ask, given that, why gay
marriage should be even necessary. This is a devious argument that attempts to subvert
the entire issue by alleging it doesn’t matter. But obviously it <em>does</em>
matter to them, otherwise they would just agree to it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The fact is that all these argument are fundamentally dishonest.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The opponents of gay-marriage know damn well that there are
already gay couples living together, and even raising children. They truth is that they hate this but can't do anything about it. Their response is therefore to say “Okay, we can’t stop gay people
living together like husbands and wives and we can’t stop them raising
children but at least we can stop these acts from being <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">officially recognised in law.” </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You see it’s all very well to say that gay
couples have the same protections under the law as all other <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">de facto </i>couples and it’s all very well to say that they can be
registered as civil unions but the argument is not about the rights and
protections of the people <em>in</em> the marriage, it is about the relationship between the
married couple <em>to the state and the wider community</em>. Marriage is regarded as a
special condition under the law and accorded a special status by virtue of
being solemnised through formal registration. Yes, it is perhaps mainly symbolic but that symbolism is powerful: it symbolises acknowledgement and respect.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Denying gay couples the right to get legally married is like
saying a gay person can go to university and study a degree; they can have
access to all the facilities, attend all the lecture and pass all their exams
and be judged as having obtained a degree but they cannot get up on the podium at
the graduation ceremony and actually be handed a certificate by the Vice
Chancellor. Imagine the university saying “We can give you a print-out of your
results proving that you passed the degree and that will enable you to get a
job but we cannot actually award a degree or call you a Bachelor." And it would be little consolation if they added "But it doesn’t really matter
because it’s really only symbolic.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The arguments against gay marriage are the same types of argument used in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia years ago to prevent African-Americans
from enjoying the same freedoms and privileges as white Americans. Make no
mistake, the battle for gay-marriage is exactly the same sort of fight. It is also worth remembering that when Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson took action to end segregation in those states they did not start off by holding a plebiscite. They passed laws and set about enforcing them.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span>
</div>
Ian McFadyenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15485556320535200135noreply@blogger.com0