Feeling beleaguered? Besieged? Be buggered...

Oh dear, yet another crit against you-know-who...

External aggression has long been a News Corp trait, but perhaps the attacks on journalism educators on two continents betray a new edge. It is a political axiom that the presence of an external enemy builds internal solidarity. In Britain, News is embroiled in the biggest media scandal in living memory, one that goes to the heart of its governance procedures and throws doubt on the future direction of all its operations. As News Corp’s internal desperation grows, it is likely that the ferocity of its attacks against its critics will escalate.

Another vituperative editorial would seem in order, eh Chris?

—READ MORE—

Trouble, trouble...

Everywhere.

A reminder that all’s not well after the liberation:

“I not only weaken the opposition, I’m going to make them dead ... and if anyone is strong enough to try to hold a demonstration, I will beat all those dogs and put them in a cage.”

No, this was not Muammar el-Qaddafi in his infamous “cockroach” speech in 2011, when he urged his supporters to go “house to house” to kill the opposition.  The speaker was Prime Minister Hun Sen of Cambodia, responding with typically threatening language to the suggestion by a Cambodian critic that he should be worried about the overthrow of a dictator in Tunisia.

The guy’s been in power for going on a quarter century.

Meanwhile, all's not well in Nigeria’s Zamfara state:

The discovery of gold in Zamfara brought hope to the state’s residents, but the consequences have been deadly... At least 400 children have died from lead poisoning in Zamfara since 2010, and at least another 2,000 children need urgent treatment for lead poisoning.

That’s possibly a generational catastrophe in the making.

Meanwhile, all's not well in the US’s corporate regulatory framework:

In the few days since its IPO, Facebook’s stock price has fallen almost 20 percent amidst news that underwriters led by Morgan Stanley and perhaps Facebook itself shared negative assessments of the company only with big, institutional investors — not with the broader investing public. ...

The most hyped IPO in history has turned into a debacle marred by insider dealing.  It’s no exaggeration to say the whole world was watching — and still the decks were stacked against average investors.

This is remarkable commentary on the untrustworthiness of Wall Street.  If anyone had any doubts, it shows the utter folly in relying on Wall Street to police itself. ...

Congress did just pass and President Obama eagerly signed legislation — the misnamed JOBS Act — to reduce regulatory oversight of Wall Street and the launch of IPOs.  It aims to make it easier for new companies to launch IPOs without providing detailed information about their operations to investors.  Whoops.

At the time the bill was under consideration, critics (including Public Citizen) suggested the JOBS Act was basically pro-fraud legislation.  “The legislation is premised on the dangerous and discredited notion that the way to create jobs is to weaken regulatory protections,” wrote a public interest coalition headed by the Consumer Federation of America and Americans for Financial Reform.  The legislation would “roll back regulations that are essential to protecting investors from fraud and abuse, promoting the transparency on which well-functioning markets depend, and ensuring the fair and efficient allocation of capital.”

The JOBS Act was an assault on common sense at the time it was passed — has the Obama administration and Congress really forgotten that the Wall Street crash that threw us into the Great Recession was caused in significant part by regulatory failures? — but it looks even worse this week than it did at time of passage.

If ever anyone deserved to be defriended...

—READ MORE—

So, so senstive Tony

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says posters that depict him as racist, homophobic and sexist are "tacky and not funny".

The posters, displayed inside the Sydney electorate office of Health Minister Tanya Plibersek, carry the slogans: "I'm threatened by boats and gays. Gays on boats are my worst nightmare" and also "Note to Ladies: Make me a sandwich".

Mr Abbott told the Nine Network this morning: "It's tacky, it's not funny and Tanya Plibersek should be better than that and the Labor Party should lift its game."

Yes, ok then...short memory.

Minister's 'gays on boats' poster upsets Abbott.

—READ MORE—

Energy driven II

Alluding to the climate science death threats controversy here in Australia, Tim Blair reckons that the deadly activities of eco-anarchist groups in Europe “rather puts local claims into perspective.”

Thus, if that mother who was sent threats of violence against her children thought she had problems, she should try being actually shot dead. See how she likes that!

You see, those “local claims” are simply an artefact of energy being driven into the climate debate.

Or, as one of Andrew Bolt’s commenters put it, “real-word [sic] robust public scrutiny and criticism” (Wake up Australia of Pennant Hills, Tue 29 May 2012, 10:38am).

So, Australia’s climate boffins need to just STFU and cop it sweet, because their whining is simply driving more and more energy into the climate debate.

They wouldn’t want things to get yet more real-worldy and robusty now, would they?

Al Capone could have put it somewhat more succinctly, but we are after all civilised people here.

—READ MORE—

Tainted vote

The anti-constitutional doctrine of “the tainted vote” saw Parliament descend once again into farce yesterday, as opposition leader Tony Abbott and his little lieutenant Christopher Pyne made a dash for the doors to “cancel out” the vote of pariah MP Craig Thomson.

So, not only are the voters of Thomson’s electorate of Dobell to be denied their right to representation in the people’s House, but now Abbott’s and/or Pyne’s constituents as well?

And all because of Abbott’s insistence that the Australian people should have made him Prime Minister at the last election but got it all so horribly wrong.

—READ MORE—

The Australian’s shame over death threat emails

It just goes on and on — an editorial today in The Australian demands: “Correct your errors, Mr Holmes.”

On May 24, the ABC website finally admitted what was reported on The Australian’s front page on May 3 — that emails at the centre of the original story “were found by the Privacy Commissioner to contain abuse, but not overt threats.”

As correctly pointed out by Holmes over a week ago, the emails in question were not “at the centre of the original story” at all; rather, they were garnered from a period a year or more after the incidents which prompted the relocation of ANU staff.

At any rate, one wonders whether The Australian considers it at all significant that ANU people were still evidently receiving abusive emails a year or more after having to be relocated due to threatening incidents.

The Australian, Mr Holmes claimed, “looks worst of all” among the media organisations involved — for enlightening readers with accurate reports that included the full facts about a significant story.

So then, what’s “accurate” about ascribing centrality to a bunch of emails that isn’t warranted by the plain facts. And then headlining that death threat emails had been “debunked”, when there’s been ample credible material published to warrant real concern.

—READ MORE—

Scepticism and denialism

Further on the ANU climate-death-threats controversy, The Australian’s legal affairs editor Chris Merritt has today fired off another desperate salvo at the ABC and Media Watch.

He gives voice inter alia to the concerns of a handful of committed campaigning climate sceptics who seem unhappy with the ABC’s continued refusal to demur to the proposition that there were no death threats to any Australian climate scientists ever, period.

I have nothing to add to what I’ve already noted about all this, except to note that the “threatening incidents” towards ANU staff, established as occurring in late-2009 and early-2010, took place in the context of the Copenhagen climate summit of December 2009, culminating in relocation of the ANU staff in February 2010.

Keen observers will recall that time was characterised by somewhat overblown assertions in the populist media regarding the Copenhagen ‘agenda’.  For instance, consider the following from an associate editor of a major Australian metropolitan daily:

To say that Leftist groups are using the global warming scare to further their dreams of world government is not a conspiracy theory but the literal truth...

Note that what was being considered there were draft treaty arrangements for mitigation of what the Australian Government then recognised (and presumably still does) as the most pressing moral challenge of our time.  The world is planted thick with sundry treaty arrangements, from NATO to the European Union to the WTO.

The most-read columnist proceeded to conflate those draft treaty arrangements with conspiracist notions of world government; then served up the reeking confection to a readership primed with his daily rants against Teh Left Who Want to Oppress You; and, moreover, a readership sometimes inhabited by a minority but vocal lunar fringe.

Fast forward to today and one finds that one of most strident and venomous critics of the ANU death threats “smear” is that very same most-read columnist.

Well, who could blame someone for being in denial about having unwittingly helped feed something so ugly?

—READ MORE—

He said, he said

James Delingpole, conservative writer, The Australian:

I had a run-in with prickly ABC talk radio host... One of the things that has always puzzled me about the Left is that for all its fine talk about the virtues of free speech, it's often at least as eager as any authoritarian Right regime to close it down. Nowhere is this tendency better exemplified than by the behaviour of those two gruesome siblings, the BBC and the ABC: despite their pretensions of even-handedness and social responsibility, the way they abuse their near-monopolistic domination of their country's broadcast media owes more to statist tyrannies than free democracies.

Mark Scott, ABC Managing Director, Senate Estimates:

It struck me that there are a number of these international people, mainly climate change sceptics, who come and are interviewed on all our programs, and before they leave they drop a diary column to the Spectator and a piece in the Australian and leave. I am sorry that he did not feel that the robust questioning he got on the ABC was the kind of questioning he wanted. But he does present himself as contrary and running against conventional wisdom, and that is what you get. I would say that in his final paragraph he describes the ABC, talking about the way we abuse “the near monopolistic domination” — talking about us and the BBC — “of their country‘s broadcast media.” I thought that if he really has come to Australia and appeared on all these outlets and believes that the ABC has a near monopolistic domination of the country‘s broadcast media, then quite frankly I do not think we need to hear much from him anymore, if that is the level of insight that he really has.

That just about wraps it up for . . .

—READ MORE—

Friends needed

The haemorrhaging of value from Facebook stock following last week’s IPO has been cause for much consternation in the business press.

“Where are Facebook’s friends?”

they ask in unison (for instance, here and here and here and so on).

As a concept Facebook is “really cool”, CEO Mark Zuckerberg is wont to say (endlessly).

It is by far the most innovative online social networking platform with incredible reach and penetration. Show me someone whose Mum isn’t on Facebook and I will show you a socially deprived individual.

But that cool concept must be monetised in order for it to be viable and sustainable. The health and vigour of an online community is reflected in its share price.

That’s where you, the Facebook user, come in. As a free-loader on the online corporate infrastructure provided by Facebook, it behoves you to do your part in generating the value that will sustain the concept.

In short, you need to get on that platform and interact. Use the silly applications. Play the mindless games. Engage in shameless self-promotion, or even a spot of cyber-bullying within acceptable limits. Generate your fair share of interstitial nodes of demographic data.

In shorter: Be Mark’s friend.

Consume and, ultimately, be consumed.

image source verydemotivational.com

FACEBOOK & YOU

—READ MORE—

Energy driven

On ABC TV’s Media Watch last night, Jonathan Holmes made a sterling attempt to unravel the controversy over alleged death threats to climate scientists in Australia.

It’s much as I suspected: A concatenation and endless loop of misreporting, claim, counter-claim, self-righteous indignation, partisan posturing, etc.

From the material presented by Holmes and the Media Watch team there can be no doubt that a number of climate scientists in Australia have been subjected to abusive and threatening approaches — whether by email or other means — by some of the more unhinged exponents of climate ‘scepticism’.

Yet some prominent and even not-so-prominent mass-bloggers are still in denial on that point. Andrew Bolt still wants the story to be about who said what to whom and when. He simply can’t let it go because he has for many weeks now invested so much of his credibility into ratchetting up the invective to the nth.

Meanwhile, Bolt’s stablemate at News £td, Tim Blair has summed up Holmes' efforts thus:

In the short term, yep, a win for Holmes. But in the long term, warmies have never understood how much energy these evidence-avoiding tactics drive into the climate debate.

That’s kind of an interesting formulation: Abuse and threats resolved as “energy driven into the climate debate.”

Well, after all, this is the guy whose response to an actor’s public fantasising about shooting a journalist was to entertain the actor over drinky-poos.

—READ MORE—