Saturday 4th of May 2024
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free sprach...

free sprat...

It might seem unusual to take a stand for a bloke who has called you a ''patronising, supercilious racist git'' when that very same man has just been prosecuted for ''race hate speech'' - but the conviction of Andrew Bolt ought to raise alarm bells for all who believe in freedom of expression.

However much you disagree with Bolt, the ''hate speech'' law under which he was prosecuted is more offensive than he is.


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/play-ball-not-bolt-in-free-speech-debate-20111027-1mm4h.html#ixzz1c35rtM34

 

Dear Julian

Free speech is never free...

Not so much in the sense of freedom to say what one want to say but in the sense of cost to human lives...

Some people can take the pain of being dragged through mud as they are themselves expert at taking people through the mud. Bolt included. Some people have fragile skin. The "free speech" conundrum relates to a very simple mathematical equation :
ax(v1-t) - by(v2-t) = z

in which a is a constant of truth and b a constant of bullshit. Z is the resultant of this free speech equation on the general population's driven crazed beliefs — such as hanging witches and stoning adulterers to death.

The changing factors x and y are the intensity at which truth and bullshit are manipulated by truth and bullshit tellers mostly via media outlets. I will explain (v1-t) and (v2-t) on another day... For example in the case of Bolt he can believe whatever bullshit he wants, but his factor y of mediatic dissemination and power of spruik attached to his bullshit — as what he said about white skinned aboriginal people — is far too powerful and ends up sending a far too strong message of hate and resentment of people who don't deserve this hate in the community. But annoyance felt by the general public is Bolt's aim. Nothing else. Stir the racist possum. Make us resent white skinned aboriginal people who don't look black enough to be called aborigines.

My "mate" Griffo died a couple of weeks ago. He was a "half-caste" — a star of generosity and Aboriginal tenacity amongst a too large crowd of poor and trodden people — many of whom don't need a Bolt's bile to push their faces into the mud once more — for his pleasure of free speech...

Anyway, enough of Bolt and his rabid ratties...

-----------------------

Now to a very schematic power play...

Imagine for a second, as I have mulled for a while, the possibility thereof, that you have been made part of a double-cross without your knowledge. If you don't know about double cross, read J. C. Masterman's book.

No matter whatever you think and done, you would have been "profiled" by psychology experts at the Pentagon and other US government outlets. These people are no dummies, trust me.

Imagine that the Empire — despite its "setbacks" such as long war in Afghanistan, which are not really setbacks, but continuation of whatever war of domination niggles, on and on — wants to extend its dominion over Africa, especially over countries with oil, including Libya... One cannot take over or attack overtly without having the support of the UN, though Bushit did it in Iraq and barely got away with it, but the international community has to accept the deed more than resent it, for the deed to proceed.

The question here is what is worth more: oil or reputation?... A tarnished reputation can be somewhat easily repolished in the eye of a confused naive public, with a few good successes such as "the end of Bin Laden"... The US had milked the bin Laden effect as much as it could... On the other side, oil is finite and one needs to grab it when one can. So we're going to play a little game of sort — called recoil to jump higher...

The choice is oil, obviously. And providing more oil to its citizens, the internal reputation of the US government can only improve and by bashing a "rat-bag" like Gadaffi can the US reputation grow internationally amongst the powerful friends — except those little countries who see through the game but have nothing to fight against the well concocted illusion of righteousness...

Meanwhile tired of dealing with compliant despots on the nose in their own countries, and seeing their use-by-date coming at a rate of knots, what a better way to accelerate turmoil, than to engender an "Arab Spring" and support the "moderates" to clean up the "democratic" slate and collect mucho more oil in the process...

Thus at some stage, one has to manipulate the perceptions of people. The process is always on the boil...

 

Not all the people will believe the same thing, but it is a case of having enough people to support your actions in order not to be sunk, electorally, financially and powerfully — and of course not to be found out. The media and governments, including Wikileaks, always manipulate the perception of the people... I can buy this...

It's easy — we're a gullible lot since we cannot be weaned of Santa Claus nor are able to abandon our religious credos, this easily. All any clever double-crossers have to do is graft some very powerful — AND CONVINCING — but totally hidden messages onto our human angst already pulped into submission by religion, advertising and other ritualistic accoutrements.



If I was working for the propaganda machine in the Pentagon, I would work the double-cross in this way:

The information I want to disseminate has to come from someone who does not suspect it and who does not like me. He may hate me but this white anger can be channelled to actually stir the pot — somewhere else more powerfully...

Thus I need to let this outlet have some "glory" to reinforce its worth as a genuine source of "hot stuff"...

Are you with me so far?

This is a normal typical double-cross... From the filtering of the information out of the secret box into the hands of a release outlet... Why have Manning, obviously someone who the US army had a few doubt about, be in a position where he could swindle out oodles of secret files?

Thus the glory comes from the "first secret release" of certain documents, movies, et cetera, damning of the way I, the US, have behaved. For example the shooting of reporters in Iraq by US troops from choppers was terrible, but this was done during the tenure of the previous president, thus the splash-back onto the present one would be minimal... And the honchos at Reuters had already seen the footage and "done nothing about it"... Thus there is some ambiguity in the value but I am prepared to be pelted with eggs, no worries.

Then comes a wad of my diplomatic honest assessment of diplomatic counterparts, a distrust of some of the relationships with despots, et al. We would have to accept that I already have access to their diplomatic honest assessment of diplomatic counterparts (me) and they know they cannot protest too much without loosing their own footing. This of course, is followed by release of documents to which you Julian can be proud of. Engender the Arab Spring revolution...

Now for the coup de smart grace... the US and its partners in NATO HELP the Arab revolution with the blessing of the UN, despite going quite further than the UN had "authorised"... Unfortunately with Gaddafi, they had to add a bit more sauce, including military intervention as to get rid of the fellow...

Eventually all this paid off, letting "freedom" prevail in much of these countries, leading to a more than ever divided environment. Divide and conquer... You with me?... The only place where this scenario is still at play is Syria... Freedom in Saudi Arabia is not sought after as the despotic rule there is still very profitable and compliantly stabilising of the oil pricing.

Meanwhile, Gaddafi who never wanted to borrow money had created a somewhat rich Libya with no debt to the world. But the new Libyan government will have to pay for its own reconstruction... and go into debt or "make deals" on the worth of its oil... And the new government will be divided, the country will be divided by tribal disputes, etc... Here I come with the jerrycans.

Game won on this score...

 

Eventually, some of the shrapnel in the "secret release" of document cannot be trusted... You would know.

But of all things the freedom of secret-stuff mouthpiece (you), is now obsolete. You're not gettting any more "secrets" for release anymore. You have, of course, been vilified to stir up your desire to publish and be damned... Meanwhile, now, everything is made sure that even should court cases brought against you, under false pretences, fail, the subject (you) is tainted, sent broke and eventually shut down when not needed any more...

Free speech is never free...

hard core and sadistic violence are "censored"...

So what subjects are off limits? What societal ''goods'' are worthy of protection through censorship? And who decides? Science says climate change is happening. The United Nations Security Council has deemed it a threat to international peace and security. Why don't we just introduce a climate change-denial law prohibiting Barnaby Joyce from rubbishing climate change so we can prosecute him and get on with the necessary reforms?

This may sound ridiculous - and Joyce would in any event hide behind the parliamentary privilege, giving him the protection we all deserve - but therein lies the danger of allowing the state to regulate what political speech is acceptable. The law, whether civil or criminal, is a serious business. At its end is the deployment of armed police to imprison people or seize their assets by force. It should never be used to regulate disfavoured views.


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/play-ball-not-bolt-in-free-speech-debate-20111027-1mm4h.html#ixzz1c3Q4mgCU


read my comment above, below the toon...

free for some...

Everything was peaceful. There was no noise and the kids weren't getting in anyone's way. It was no trouble to walk past them to and from Macquarie Street

But last Sunday the coppers moved in at dawn, busted up the camp, and 40 people were arrested. A senior police officer explained that bankers had been abused on their way to work.

How frightful. We can't have that sort of anarchy happening: bankers copping an earful one minute, world revolution the next. Saved in the nick of time. The police had been protecting the public, doing their job responsibly, said Barry O'Farrell.

For the next few days I scanned the media to see if there'd be any outcry about this assault on freedom of speech. You'll remember that when Andrew Bolt, Melbourne's village idiot, got done for racial discrimination, there were weeks of hullabaloo from the High Tory claque. The left had won an infamous victory for Orwellian political correctness; democracy itself was at stake.

This time around, not a peep. Freedom of speech, it seems, extends only to those people the right agrees with. When that ugly rabble of Alan Jones listeners hurled abuse at Julia Gillard from the public gallery in Parliament a few weeks ago, opposition MPs invited a bunch of them to lunch.


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/so-wheres-the-outrage-now-boys-20111028-1mo1b.html#ixzz1c7726X9W

the truth about not acting your age...

Two US acting unions have criticised movie website IMDb over its policy of giving actor's ages and dates of birth.

The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) said the site was "facilitating age discrimination".

They claim actors are losing work because of details published on site.

It comes after a US actress sued Amazon, which owns the Internet Movie Database, for more than $1m (£621,000) after it posted her age.

The unnamed actress claims the website misused her legal date of birth after she signed up to the IMDbPro service in 2008. She believes revealing her age could lose her acting opportunities.

In a joint statement, the unions said: "An actor's actual age is irrelevant to casting. What matters is the age range that an actor can portray.

"For the entire history of professional acting, this has been true but that reality has been upended by the development of IMDb as an industry standard used in casting offices across America."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-15492579

 

see toon at top...

 

Of course the hypothetical double-cross "fantasy" I wrote at the top of this line of blog is the plot line of my next novel (and/or full-length feature movie) and anyone who think they can steal it can do so  — as long as they acknowledge ye old Leonisky...

leak in progress....

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) held grave fears for public safety when it emerged that details of planned anti-terrorism raids had been leaked to a media outlet, a court has been told.

AFP Commissioner Tony Negus said he was "devastated" to learn on July 30, 2009 that The Australian newspaper was preparing to publish information the following day relating to Operation Neath.

He told Melbourne Magistrates Court he negotiated in a "frank and animated" discussion with the newspaper's then editor Paul Whittaker to hold off publishing the story because attacks were planned on an Australian military base, of which the newspaper was unaware.

He told the hearing he was devastated the newspaper had been tipped off about the long-term investigation, which was one of the more serious cases the AFP had ever been involved in.

Mr Negus said if the story had run the following day, the targets of the operation would have become aware they were suspects and may have brought forward any planned attacks.

"The potential for them to turn up at a shopping centre and start shooting people was a real one," Mr Negus told the court.

He was giving evidence at a pre-trial committal hearing for Victorian police officer Simon Justin Artz, who is accused of leaking details of Operation Neath to The Australian journalist Cameron Stewart.


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/afp-feared-leak-could-spark-terror-attack-20111102-1mvea.html#ixzz1cXItcY4q

see toon and story below at top...

unfettered progress of science...

...

The University of Virginia initially agreed to allow lawyers for ATI to review the emails. But on Tuesday its lawyers said they no longer trusted ATI to keep the contents confidential before their release.

With Tuesday's ruling, Mann for the first time has a say in the university's decisions about which emails should be released.

Rick Piltz, the director of Climate Science Watch, said Mann's lawyers could also be expected to fight more strenuously for his privacy than his former employer.

Mann's legal battles do not end with Tuesday's decision. The judge ordered the scientist and the university to come to an agreement with ATI on email access by 20 December or else he would impose one.

"I have no illusions that ATI and their industry-funded ilk are going to give up in their efforts to harass me and other climate scientists," Mann wrote. "But this is a very good day for me, for my fellow scientists across the country who might fear that they could be subject to similar intimidation tactics if their work too were perceived as a threat to powerful vested interests, and it's a good day for the public, which, after all, depend on the unfettered progress of science for the betterment of modern life."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/02/climate-change-michael-mann-emails

hacking for free speech...

Secret internal documents kept by News International reveal that executives knew three years ago that there was "overwhelming" evidence of senior journalists' involvement in phone hacking. A cache of new documents – company legal letters, briefing papers, and notes from telephone conversations – shows the private thoughts of the controlling core of executives.

They provide devastating evidence of their fear of the fallout from hacking, and the efforts they made to keep any evidence away from public examination. Even as the company publicly denied that voicemail interception had spread beyond a single "rogue reporter", the company's senior legal advisers were warning in 2008 of the weight of evidence showing that their long-standing defence against hacking was "fatally" damaged and their situation was commercially "perilous".

The documents heap pressure on the already embattled News Corp European chairman, James Murdoch, who had been the presumed heir to his father's global media empire. With his credibility now on the line, Mr Murdoch will be questioned by MPs next Thursday about how his account of the phone-hacking scandal differs to those given by his key lieutenants and lawyers – specifically about when, and how much, he knew about the internal hacking culture at the News of the World.

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/lies-damned-lies-and-news-international-6255895.html

level playing fields .....

Yes Gus,

Whilst it sounds like Tony Negus went to the same finishing school as Alan Joyce, surely the greater concern has to be about what a piss weak bunch of incompetents are running the Federal Police?

Surely if Paul Whittaker genuinely believed that the then editor of the Australian was about to seriously compromise a major Police operation, why not simply go & arrest the bastard & lock him up? Of course, it sure says everything about the power of Murdoch in the backblocks of down-under that they didn't, whilst they'd come for you or me lickety-split for a lot less.

full rein to be racist...

 

THE ABBOTT GOVERNMENT will introduce legislation into Federal Parliament this week – its very first sitting week – winding back Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

The  amended legislation, if passed by both Houses, will give extreme rightwing writers like Andrew Bolt full rein to express their racist views without fear of prosecution.

Bolt has already breached this provision and was in 2011 found guilty of racial discrimination.

His criticism of Aboriginal people has become his stock in trade, traducing light skinned Aboriginals and denying Aboriginal children were ever stolen from their families.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/abbott-government-acts-swiftly-to-legalise-racism,5882

 

See toon and story at top...

 

caring about people...

"It is utterly indefensible that a body charged with protecting the great pantheon of human rights - according to its enabling legislation, those listed in the United Nations' International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights - should be so myopically focused on anti-discrimination"

Chris Berg at the Drum...

-------------------------------

No law is ever perfect. But laws such as section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act are designed to minimise the bullying from the powerful — including those people that are placed in position to spruik for the powerful — by punishing the bullies and the spruikers who commit abuse, especially verbal, against those who do not have the reach, nor the the ability nor the will to fight mostly because they are decent or "poor". But when they feel they have been wronged and the offence impacts their way of life, they need something to help them through. Without such recourse to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, some Aboriginal people would be trodden-on some more by a society that has not cared much about them (despite oodles of money thrown at the "problem") and on top of this, though people like Bolt, mock them for being who they are. 

One's pure freedom stops where other people freedom starts... And it's the same for all. This is what this law is trying to encapsulate in regard to verbal or racial abuse. Should an Aboriginal person insult he police, he/she would soon find him/herself in the slammer... Though the police in general is good and decent, sometimes the police might do things that could incite people to insult them...

The weak, the poor and the decent people need a law that protects them from verbal abuse — abuse that could induce unwarranted shame or resentment with psychological trauma... The rich dudes fight it out in defamation court cases, they have the moneys to burn.


Here on this site I do not refrain from abusing say pollies and especially those fn the rabid right and Tony Abbott...

 

When that man talks of decency, one could spew... The man has been a vicious negator of decency for the last decade and he condoned signs by standing in front of them — signs that were more denigrating that he could imagine. The man has uttered many silly and nasty comments, the list of which is too long to quote and yet he uses the word decency with gravitas, as if he was the only one knowing the meaning of it...  

 

The man has been lying to himself and others most of his life. I don't care about Tony Abbott. We can try to defend ourselves against this idiot and his silly policies, but in face of directed attack, especially by the media, some people have no way of reply and the words of an Andrew Bold too easily become currency in the society because it's easier to be nasty than to care. People like Bolt have to be stopped or fully measured to protect decent people.

I care about decent people and I care about the planet foremost.

Tony Abbott and Brandis are idiots for wanting to repeal section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. 

free speech does not mean one is right or good or not crazy...

In an interview with Jane Hutcheon, at One plus One, on the ABC, Andrew Bolt gets horrified that there are people about to stage an exhibition of "artistic" works from people in prison... As he says : "I did check who these prisoners were — rapists, murderers, cannibals, etc", then Bolt shivered that there was a "frisson" (shiver in French) of excitement amongst the artistic community... or such... I did not watch much more and viewing Bolt's shivering was only an accident while switching channels...


Sure.
Yes, Mr Bolt, some crazy people are somewhat creative... Having given them the opportunity to express themselves in art may have therapeutic effects... I know it has. Would I not be drawing toons every morning demonising the idiocy of the right-wing rat-bags, I would go crazy... I mean CRAZY!... To have an exhibition of prisoners' work might give them a worth of themselves being more than murderously crazy...
And if we look carefully at the top of the crazy scale, there are people who are deemed sane, but who will lie through their teeth to go and wage illegal MURDEROUS wars, like PRESIDENT Bush and PM Blair for example — and our own Johnnee... Now, should we not exhibit the dog paintings by George Bush because he was a dangerous lying donkey?... No. George deserves as much attention as the next artist — except his work is quite unimaginative and pretty lousy... No insight in here...
At least with the others, those who are in prison for murdering people, there is a chance of an artistic insight into the psyche of mad people. This was (and is?) the subject of "Art Brut" — a museum, in Lausane Switzerland, created by Jean Dubuffet.
There are more crazy people on the loose than in prison... Some are not dangerous, but some like Bush were. Presently we have a certain Tony being the vilest idiotic of PM ever in this country, with not a single proper creative bone in his body except for demolition jobs, but then you would not recognise this, Mr Screw-loose, sorry... Mr Bolt...
Those who want to view the stint, go to : http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-21/one-plus-one-andrew-bolt/5282174