Sh*t Box

Introducing "The Amazing Shit Box"

(via davidthompson)

A powerful Dame

From this story in The Age on Sunday 19th October:

"A FORMER head of Britain's security service, MI5, yesterday described the response to the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US as a "huge overreaction""

I would argue that a "huge overreaction" would have been the appearance of a mushroom cloud over a city (or cities), and anything else responding to a direct attack on a countries soil is, well, up for debate.

She goes further to say that:

"the invasion of Iraq influenced young men in Britain who turned to terrorism"

Ah yes, that old chestnut. Root causes, blah blah blah. Remember kiddies, once the Obamamessiah takes the whitehouse, this silly thing call "Islamic Terrorism" will just disappear, having exposed itself to be just a right-wing conspiracy operation under the evil supernatural powers of Bush, Blair and Howard.

The actual article appears to cherry pick statements by Dame Stella so I'm not 100% convinced she is in fact against the "war on terror" rhetoric that the paper makes out to be, but a quick Google shows that the first female director of one Britains super secret organisations, is really not media shy in the slightest.

In fact, she's bringing out a spy novel, and has no problem doing many interviews, some of which are really hard hitting:

"With her pastel pink jacket and a demure single strand of pearls, Rimington might look like a typical society matron in Masterpiece Theater"

So as much as I should defer to the opinion of someone who ran an intelligence agency, which clearly The Guardian and The Age would like us to listen to, it's a bit hard for me to take seriously someone who has to face down religious fanatics daily and protect the West doing puff-piece interviews wearing a "pastel pink jacket and a demure single strand of pearls".

At the very least she should be wearing a dark colour business suit....

Those pesky pirates

And now they're getting mercenaries to help clean up the seas.

Arrr...T'is a hard time to be a pirate right now....

A history lesson

I haven't written too much on the US election, not because I haven't been following it but more my underwhelming cynicism on who America choses as the next leader of the "free world".

Most of my peers seem to be in the Obama camp, to the point where at a dinner recently, a close acquaintance mentioned something about the brand of Obama's walkman, musical choice, or some such inane 'fact' about the (potential) next US president.

Since when did knowing the brand of anything of a US presidential nominee uses, confer any sort of suitability to run the biggest economy in the world???Who cares if Obama eats the same brand of baked beans as me??!?!

This is a dude who will potentially have to sit down with the following characters and negotiate:

Vladimir Putin	Hu Jintao	Mahmoud Ahmanadinejad	Kim Jong-Il
(president of USSR Russia, ex-KGB, loves fishing, judo, the great outdoors and the odd extremely bloody territorial conflict. Also has a lot of nukes, not entirely sure where all of them are...)	(president of China, with a 1.3billion population and a proud 3,000 year history of which about 100 years have been spent opposing the US in almost everyway possible)	(president of Iran, desperately trying to acquire offensive nuclear capability, believer in the resurrection of the 12th Imam, who's return will mean the end of days)	(semi-retarded son of previous leader of Nth Korea, currently starving his population as he spends too much money trying to spread North Korean missile and nuclear technology across the world)

Some history:

Jimmy Carter was the American President from 1977-1981. In November 1979, some "students" took the 52 people hostage in the American embassy in Tehran and kept them hostage all the way through to the day before Pres. Jimmy left office in 1981 (coincidence? ya think?). There are rumours that Ahmadinejad was one of the hostage takers. Now tell me he isn't just itching to smack the US in the face again..

What does this have to do with Obama? This:

"The lesson of being strong in defending interests and combating enemies has not quite been learned. Today, the opposite is the mainstream prescription for success and the United States may be about to elect a president whose world view parallels the way Carter worked."

From the Obama campaign website (viewed on 11th October, 2008):

"Making clear that he planned to talk to Iran without preconditions, Mr. Obama emphasized further that "changes in behavior" by Iran could possibly be rewarded with membership in the World Trade Organization, other economic benefits and security guarantees."

Oooooooh Membership in the WTO, what an awesome carrot as inducement away from "wiping Israel off the map". Because all the previous dealings with Iran have been so...fruitful.

There is sooo much wrong with the political positions (and acquaintances) of Obama that are being glossed over in the media. What I see in the world is Gen X and Ys desperate for salvation from the 'sins' of Bush, thus putting all their goodwill, media organisations, and votes behind a man who stands for...what exactly?

Just don't be surprised if he does get elected that his actual politics will come to the fore, and then, Space Monkey help us all.....

Afterword:
Pootie really is a black belt in Judo....

Extraditing Speech

Re: this

This is not a good thing. Raiding a plane, arresting, and then extraditing someone on the basis of online expressions of view (now 3 years old) is an unfortunate picture of the future.

That his views were reprehensible, wrong and stupid is beside the point. Some European countries have laws against Holocaust denial, and paradoxically, laws against the expression of certain points of view do not protect free speech, they endanger it. The argument goes if only there was "more" limits to free speech, then the Nazis could not have come to power and the Holocaust would have never happened.

The Nazis did not need to suppress free speech, because when they were elected, they inherited a whole bunch of laws that the previous (Weimar republic) government had passed in relation to restraining free speech:

"The uncomfortable fact is that the Nazis didn’t invent the apparatus of power or culture of repression in Germany, they merely took control of, and perfected, an apparatus and culture that had already been created and used by “liberals” to combat extremism."

The fact that Mr Toben can be extradited from the UK to Germany under an EU arrest warrant should concern everyone. Today it is Holocaust denial; tomorrow, it could be "insulting religion" or "denying the Space Monkey", or "quoting an imam".

Free speech is perhaps the most important right we have inherited. The idea that that a transnational body can make and enforce speech codes is a grave concern to anyone that has ever expressed a point of view.

What is missing?

From this article.

Other than the childs' parents or guardians? (That, in itself, regrettably, is a hint.)

Seriously Racist

Actual headline from the BBC site: Australia racism 'still serious'

Curious as to why a UK based news agency thought this was news, I thought I wonder exactly "who" is going to be the focus of this 'racism'. I mean we said "Sorry" to the Indigenous Australians, and whilst not enacting any policies to improve their standard of living, but hey, at least we apologised. And remember kids, these days it's way more important to be seen to be doing the right thing, than actually doing it.

"The group most often singled out as "not belonging" in Australia was Muslims or people from the Middle East, Professor Dunn told reporters on the weekend."

What a surprise! It's of course the turbanophobia (or was that hijabophobia?) raising it's ugly head. Two things kinda scream at me from this:

1. At what point in time are new immigrants considered integrated? Pizza, like it or hate it, ran for 5 seasons on SBS TV, where the principal characters were Lebanese. And no TV show runs for 5 seasons if there's no audience, even on SBS. Are we allowed to consider the Lebanese characters depicted as "integrated"? Is Lebanon in the Middle East?

"Pizza" cast photo, 2005. Spot the evil racist whiteys....

2. The scare quotes around "not belonging". Exactly how that is defined or measured is mercifully absent from the rest of the article, but you can be sure that white Australians are to blame. And could this "not belonging" be a factor of said immigrants attitudes to Australians rather than the other way around?

The good Professor then continues:

""They stand out at the moment as the group that people would be most concerned about. There [are] stronger levels of social distance or fear of Islam or concern about Islam than of any other group at the moment," said Mr Dunn, a professor of human geography and urban studies."

Why would that be? Of all the immigrant groups coming into Australia, why would there be a fear of Islam?
And why the qualifier "at the moment"? Is that just in case all Australians cease to be hijabophobic overnight, and then you can pull another ethnic/cultural group out of your hat and go HA! You're still Racist, Australia!!

The BBC and pretty much every news agency will never lack for the Professor Dunn's of this world who have no problem using their academic kudos (yes I know it's just Humanities, but to the media that's still Academia) to push forward the pre-conceived narrative that only white people have the capacity to be racist, and if they don't accept everything in toto of the new immigrant culture up to and including the immigrants death wish for the current citizens, then they will be labelled the ever so scary and cruel moniker of "Racist".