According to Jeremy, New Matilda died because it wasn’t ratty enough. It lacked the ratbag element, the thing that sustained The Nation Review for years past its expiry date. He then goes on to conclude that New Matilda was killed by the “the weight of its own journalistic responsibility and decency”.
Jeremy seems to attribute a degree of rattiness to Crikey yet the relative economic fortunes of Crikey and NM are poles apart. I agree that rattiness is an important element in popular medium, it helps to differentiate your product from the conformist milieu that dominates the landscape and sucks the lifeblood of financial support out of the market.
However I disagree that NM lacked rattiness. I just think it lacked enough of it to attract a high quality lawsuit that would shoot the publication to national notoriety. But then NM was also a creature of the times, financially responsible and earnest in its desire to good. Maybe if NM does a biblical it will return to us free of the need to make a buck and with totally evil intent.
One thing for sure, NM was always a better read than the SMH.
Like a few people I am rather cynical about the role of the mainstream media (msm). In part this cynicism arises from working in media for a while, in part it is reinforced by the fact that the msm has become a fully integrated component of the capitalist system and as such is unable to examine or question the dominant paradigm that seems to have the world rushing towards a rather unpleasant future.
Yet its role in providing us with some form of public record of events persists. In this regard I am not referring to the vast quantities of opinions or op-edits that clutter most of the press sites or their physical manifestations. Nor am I talking about the gratuitous and highly condensed form of TV reporting that graces our screens around dinner time. I am simply observing the fact that the press still provides a first draft of history, incomplete for sure, but a draft nonetheless. However we also learnt something else from the Rupert’s Australian in recent times.
What we learnt or observed quite explicitly is that the public domain of knowledge about what goes on in the corridors of politics is manipulated by practitioners of spin who are highly connected to media outlets and political sources. We see daily the public fascade of politics, the proceedings of the houses of parliament are public record, and we glimpse the stage managed events designed to neatly encapsulate some minute bit of government policy. And then we get the codified version of the behind the scenes mechanations offered up by the various journalists imbedded into Parliament House.
Imbedded journalists were used by the US recently to improve their media profile during the invasion of Iraq and in the Afghanistan campaign. The idea was that such journalists or media would form a close relationship with their protectors and report a version of the ground war that was largely sympathetic to the US mission. Of course given the life and death nature of combat, the highly charged emotional nature of such environment has parallels with the psychological phenomenon know as the Stockholm Syndrome.
The atmosphere in media circles on Capitol Hill during the few days that saw Rudd deposed in favour of Gillard was highly charged. The twitterverse was alive with random noise and the iPhones were hardly able to stay on charge long enough to work for more than a few hours. The symbiotic nature of the relationship between institutionalised media that is embedded into Parliament House and the political sources was clearly illustrated, both needing the other to play a role in a drama that becomes part of the public record, both reaffirming and legitimising the other.
There is a widespread belief especially among left leaning circles that the media has an overriding right wing political agenda. This view is often expressed when considering the overly political “campaigns” waged by the Australian against things like the government’s roof insulation scheme or school building program. Given such concerns it seems remarkable to learn that certain elements within this so-called left leaning government were using the very same media to conduct a campaign of destabilisation directed against the incumbent Prime Minister.
What is knowable about the events of last week is limited. Public access to the halls of Parliament House is restricted, our knowledge is mediated by professionals. These professionals in turn are locked in with their subject material and on one hand they are dependent on the business of politics to justify their existence. On the other hand they are subject to the demands of efficiency or motivated by concerns for profitability even if such considerations are at arms length to the day-to-day business of reporting on politics.
What is clear from the events of last week and the behaviour of the msm is simply that none of it can be trusted to inform the public with a complete factual record of what goes on. Clearly the media subscribes to the notion that we can’t handle the truth. Also clear is an acceptance and exploitation of this modus operandi by political parties. Equally as likely is the idea that drama of politics transcends the business of government which has serious implications for any concerns about the capacity of government to improve the living conditions of the public they supposedly serve. The soap opera of politics now dominates the inquiring mind of the our fourth estate watchdogs while the broader substantive issues are abandoned to writers who preach from the pulpit of vested interest.
As the tropical storm season kicks in BP’s dubious contribution to a better world continues to poison the gulf with “current official estimates suggesting between 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day are leaking from the rogue well.” BP estimates it has collected over 24,000 barrels on Friday and about 11,640 barrels in the first half of Saturday.
Despite reports that oil continues to leak into the gulf at an alarming rate the continuing pressure on the stock of BP and the need for other oil companies to stay afloat has forced one man, a judge in the US, to overturn the Obama moratorium on new oil wells in the Gulf.
Oil companies say the government has not proven the need for a blanket ban on deep sea drilling and warn it will lead to major layoffs. Judge Feldman agreed and in his ruling on Tuesday sharply rebuked the U.S. government.
The downward pressure on BP’s stock price has now been linked to pensioner funds in the UK. So the global impact of our neverending thirst for stuff to put in our cars rewards the capitalists but punishes the workers potentially affected by the moratorium, undermines the financial security of retirees and still costs the earth.
Of course it is easy to suspect the motivation of a single judge delivering a decision that favours the oil companies despite the explicit wishes of the President. Even from Oz you can easily imagine various scenarios that would explain it. Local pressure to keep local businesses afloat, traditional distrust of the north by the south or straight out graft and corruption.
But there’s a far more troubling dimension to this news. It connects somewhat arbitrarily to the local mining reaction to the election of Julia Gillard as PM. Both outcomes seem to illustrate that public politics is subservient to other forces. Our democratically elected representatives can do no more than ask the capitalists to play along. When the capitalists decide not to play the game is up.
And just in case you thought there was some vestige of the socially progressive spirit alive in the US consider the news (both fair and balanced) from Fox News that in the US the minority Republican extreme right has somehow defeated an Obama bill that would extend unemployment benefits and provide financial assistance to the states to avert unemployment. The reason, government debt. Of course government expenditure on defence in the US has nothing what so ever to do with government debt, let alone the billions of dollars routinely handed private enterprises like Blackwater.
The extraordinary media campaign against KRudd’s Labor government continues in the Oz and it seems Fairfax media has been suckered into the media agenda. Yet if evidence of the failure of the mainstream media to explore the story behind the news was ever wanting then today’s article by Peter Hatcher and Phillip Coorey illustrates just how shallow journalism can be.
On the face of it the SMH story is based on rumours that a KRudd staffer is checking on the party room support for his man. Well blow me down if that has never happened before. Then there’s bit of duboius context before we get something more concrete, that is the concerns of Labor MP’s as expressed in the caucus room, any one of which would surely be more newsworthy than a bit of speculation based on hearsay.
However…
The chief concerns MPs listed yesterday were asylum seekers, the cost of living, mental health, the mining tax, and climate change.
also illustrates the extent of the problems face by KRudd and Co and I think explains some of the optimism in the mind of the Mad Monk. On asylum seekers and boat people the government is faced with a force completely beyond their control. Let’s face it, as the world goes Australia is a pretty good place to live and it’s inevitable that the hundreds of millions of people immediately to our north agree. Short of sinking the boats and and throwing everything we can into protecting our northern frontier we will find increasingly that more people are going to take the risk of a journey in an open boat to our shores.
Likewise cost of living is a problem largely beyond the control of the governments of today since costs are largely determined by the private sector who profit from making life affordable for the masses. Another sharp jump in oil prices for example would be a killer for the government but something over which they have no control. Similarly if food production was suddenly hammered by catastrophic climate change then there’s bugger all the government can do about it. This is a consequence of laissex faire economics, something no socially progressive government with leftish tendencies has actually dealt with in recent times.
Similar arguments can be extended around mental health. I am reminded of an experiment where rats or mice were allowed to keep breeding but their physical constraints were fixed, that is as their numbers increased they became more crowded. Their social patterns became disrupted and individual behaviour became more erratic. Humans are not rats or mice but our 21st century lifestyles are relatively a long way from our hunter gatherer evolution. Does KRudd have a panacea for that?
Of course global warming is a subject far far away for this government but it and the mining tax also illustrates how the combined conservative right in this country is frustrating the will of the people as expressed in the election of KRudd and Co yet simultaneously exploiting the political impasse to gain popular advantage. Without senate control Labor’s laws always had to be negotiated through which meant that anything which upset the myriad of self interested groups represented by the various nutbags in the senate (stand up steve fielding and nick xenophon) as well as the reactionary right as represented by the liberal party and its country cousins wasn’t going to see the light of day. And then Labor gets smashed in the popular press for inactivity or failure.
Australians took a half step towards the left when they elected KRudd and Co but the parliamentary system deliberately constrains the capacity of governments to act. Journalists have no such constraints and they seem incapable of any insight beyond the fascade of sensationalism or opinionated speculation.
The unreformed finance sector is the central vehicle for this rollercoaster. The perspicacious Lordon once more: “Save me or I’ll kill you.” Or, more accurately, “Save me and I’ll kill you.” A sector whose integral function in economic activity gives it a public purpose has been appropriated for entirely private ends, and with disastrous consequences.
Meanwhile here in Oz the MSM are reporting the banks (all 4 of them) recorded a 9% increase in income from bank fees last financial year, a little under half of that coming from households who pay fees for mortgages, personal loans and credit cards.
Also echoing sentiments expressed by Jones, the ongoing debacle surrounding the Government’s moderate proposal for a Resources Rental Tax has included repeated threats by multinational mining companies to take their business elsewhere unless they get the proposed tax scrapped.
Despite the spectacular collapse of high risk schemes on Wall Street based on pernicious and predatory lending schemes and the public retreat of neoliberal ideology it is obvious that capitalists has no intention of modifying their behaviour or a desire to accommodate any desired social objectives that might be expressed by the majority of people. While this is classically portrayed as fundamental to the nature of free-enterprise and human behaviour it is also underlines the necessity for structural change. The choice is fairly obvious, either capital is brought within the sphere of social control or any ideas of social progress and ecological stabilisation must be jetisoned since the two are clearly incompatible.
Robert’s article hasn’t escaped the attention of the right. Today’s Oz features a Green bash written by Gary Johns whose articles frequently appear on the right wing think tank IPA’s website. Gary is the leftie the right loves, a former Labor minister in the Keating government and now Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Australian Catholic University’s Public Policy Institute, his article is right at home with the Oz’s right wing agenda.
However, not content with smacking down an idea before it gains traction in the public’s mind, Gary has plenty to say about the Greens and the people who might vote Green.After visiting some anonymous polling data (unreferenced of course) that labels the Green voter as young and working in Education (bloody teachers) Gary goes on to vent his spleen on these lost souls…
My theory of the green mind is that they are people who are pessimistic about the human ability to deal with the physical world. This is because their experience, as rich and powerful as it may be in, say, human relations, has little bearing on the world that determines our physical wellbeing.
That would put Gary into the hard deterministic camp. It’s also a sweeping generalisation and one that denies the importance of human relations to our society. Still after 9 years as a senior fellow at the IPA Gary’s social agenda is pretty obvious.
Gary is also guilty of rewriting history. According to Gary the VFT was
abandoned when the cost and benefit study proved it was not viable
which might be superficially true but ignores the roles of vested interests who opposed any serious competition to existing road and air transport operators. This is a structural economic issue. By pricing a VFT out of the equation, the entrenched operators preserve their monopolies which in turn reduces government decision making to ad-hoc market intervention of the type the owners and writers for the Oz consistently attack. It also restricts the choices (reduces the freedom to choose) of future generations.
Financial viability is the great debate killer of our times yet one that is used selectively. The financial cost of our Afghan adventure is never an issue when one of our soldiers die. Yet when a so-called “Green” idea surfaces that might undermine the existing status quo, its financial viability is immediately questioned and declared suspect.
The mistake in Gary’s thinking is that while Green issues do concern technology and economics, these are not the only values that matter. Unquestioning subservience to the gods of economics and technology isn’t really in the best interests of a free society or individual freedom.
This is pretty typical of Cory but here’s a real world scenario that I have butted heads with today. I’m doing casual IT support for a small non-profit group and they decided some time ago to shift to the Mac platform. I understand their motivation and basically it kind of works for them but they didn’t completely embrace the Mac ideology, like many other Mac users they kept using Microsoft Office.
Now Office is a bloated piece of shit but the problem is that a large proportion of computer users in an office environment know only one way of doing something, they use Microsoft Office to write stuff, create spreadsheets, make slide shows and check their email. They could use Open Office for example and pay nothing and do everything they already do but it doesn’t feel like MS Office and it doesn’t look as glitzy as MS Office so they stay in their comfy little boxes. And they pay for it.
Ok, this is where Cory’s piece gets interesting. With cloud computing and web apps you don’t need to install an office app. Microsoft has recognised this threat to their business model and jumped on board the same bandwagon but the older business model is still alive and kicking. If you want the features of MS Office including all the bling then you have to pay for it. Don’t try cheating the system with one product key on multiple installs because MS is a wakeup to that and they check on the network for product ID packets, however the money men recognise that paying the full price is likely to be a disincentive to sales so they offer all sorts of discount prices.
But what the hell? WTF can’t I copy it? Because of the DRM/copyright philosophy is motivated by a desire to maximes profits not to facilitate my work or my creativity. Oh of course how silly. But what if Microsoft went bust because people stopped buying their crappy software? Would offices around the globe suddenly collapse in a heap? Highly unlikely, people would just adjust and life would go on but as things stand they don’t have to adjust right now because paying for things is so bloody easy!
Which is the other end of Cory’s vision. Free software as in GPL licensed open source or the creative equivalent of Creative Commons are valid for individuals who can sustain an income from somewhere else but the software industry model espoused by Microsoft is still highly dependent on selling units of something, in the case of Office its a serial number that validates with Microsoft. And a goodly proportion of the western world is addicted to the Office interface.
What is really bizarre is the fact that a free alternative like Open Office is often sneered at by the same people who embrace the Microsoft bloatware who in turn scour the net and expect creative work from people like Cory to be free. In other words, the market place for ideas is distorted by the monopoly power that Microsoft exerts on people’s capacity to pay. Surely it is more desirable to have money going to creativity than propping up the Microsoft empire, especially when the latter is based on illegal foundations. It’s a bit of a paradigm shift but it would have significant implications for the way we live as human beings.
Apparently things are so good at Fairfax that even bylines make no sense, “Michelle Gratan is Age political editor”
However trivialities aside, what does the fortnightly beauty contestpopularity contest reveal? That the tiny sample of Australians force fed their regular diet of nightly news, shock jocks and front page sensations is a bit over the mainstream political parties and they are thinking of voting Green.
Unfortunately the two party system is decidedly skewed against any third party such as the Greens. To be really serious the Greens need around 30% of the vote but if things keep going the way they are that’s a distinct possibility. The right wing fan club of Murdoch and Co might be salivating at the prospect of their favourite monk getting in but the voters are apparently thinking beyond sermons.
Memory of the tragic Greek protests of a few weeks ago are fading fast, washed away in the never ending gush of Gulf Oil or rendered insignificant by Israeli bloody arrogance.Yet something in this report on Dublin protest organised by the Workers Solidarity Movement struck me as defining the greater problem. Maybe it’s the slogan they adopted -
“They didn’t share the wealth, why should we share the pain? Make the rich pay for the crisis”
because it seems to have far reaching connotations, one that I want to draw is the problem of anthropogenic global warming.
I’m an not going to debate the science, I’m not a scientist but my experience after 50 odd years on this part of the planet and what I see and read about other parts of the world as well as what I understand of the science and the opinion of scientists leads to a unshakeable conviction that our thirst for carbon multiplied by the sheer numbers involved has destabilised the relatively benign climatic condition the human race has enjoyed for the last 10,000 years. What’s more, the change now built into the system plus the potential for even more carbon to make its way into the atmosphere as well as the potential for methane liberated by warming the vast northern tundras creates a world changing scenario.
Now the denialist have tried to paint this picture as alarmist but that’s a tactic to divert attention from the causes and delay meaningful action to avert catastrophe. The conclusion we need to draw is that the denialist camp is part of the powers that be, maintaining the status quo as long as possible is their principle objective since the system as it is, continues to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a tiny elite.
The principle argument is this, avoiding the worst consequences of catastrophic climate change requires action on a scale similar to that which we see in times of war. The material wealth of world and our collective intellectual capacity needs to be harnessed if we are to peacefully avert the threats to humanity posed by carbon enhanced natural disasters. I have chosen war and peacefully here deliberately since war has historically been waged by the elite to defend privilege yet the stakes and technology have far surpassed any chance that war will be neatly constrained by geographic borders. War could easily wipe out the human race. It is not an option, but the only alternative is for the rich to disgorge some or most of their wealth and for the rest of us to work creatively and collectively to reduce our carbon pollution. Pretending we can go on as we are is surely the highest folly.
As the tropical storm season kicks in BP’s dubious contribution to a better world continues to poison the gulf with “current official estimates suggesting between 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day are leaking from the rogue well.” BP estimates it has collected over 24,000 barrels on Friday and about 11,640 barrels in the first half of Saturday.
