LPH 975 - Middle Mix (1914-2007)
14 minutes ago
Monday, 24 October 2011
HA!
JonathanHaynes Jonathan Haynes
The Times is live blogging release of Steve Jobs biography. The only comment after over an hour: "Oh, for God's sake. Please make it stop…"
The Times is live blogging release of Steve Jobs biography. The only comment after over an hour: "Oh, for God's sake. Please make it stop…"
Moyle VS Doyle: Where you stand determines what you see
We have a saying in nonviolence practice: "Where you stand determines what you see." Here's what I saw.
On Friday morning I was one of the last into the area before it was completely fenced off. I spent the next two hours moving between the lines of police and occupiers, asking them to remain human to one another, eventually kneeling in the space between them to pray for same. It's only when we dehumanise one another that we are capable of violence. People become "problems" to be solved instead of brothers and sisters to reason with and convince.
I read Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle's op-ed in the Herald Sun. I don't fit Mr Doyle's stereotype of "rabble". Neither did more than half the crowd there on Friday. I saw professionals, students, mothers, and tradies. In fact, the more violent the police response, the more diverse the crowd became as bystanders flocked to join the occupiers. I saw elderly shoppers in tears, clearly shocked by the brutality. Where you stand determines what you see. What they saw clearly helped them choose a side.
Mr Doyle asked of the Occupy Melbourne group, "What were those knives, hammers, bottles, bricks and fuel for?" Simple: they were used in the camp kitchen, Mr Doyle, to feed anyone who wanted food, including the homeless. The knives were used to butter bread, the bottles for drinking from, the fuel for cooking, the bricks and hammers to set up the camp. If any of those items were intended to be used as weapons, as you so obviously imply, why were they not used or even brandished as such? The occupiers had ample time and opportunity to do so. They didn't.
In fact, I ask Mr Doyle to show the public one instance of documented violence by the occupiers. If there was any such instance, you can be certain it would be all over the news - yet it is not. In fact, despite almost 100 arrests, not a single person has been charged with anything. On the other hand, YouTube (and even the Herald Sun website) is awash with examples of excessive police violence.
What is more, the eviction strategy backfired spectacularly. It moved the peaceful occupation of a public space onto the street where it was far more disruptive than it would otherwise have been. The police were clearly not in control, or they would have dispersed the group. As it was, they were incapable of moving the group more than a couple of hundred metres in more than seven hours, where they remained blocking intersections. Now far from being "returned to the people", the city square is blocked off with fences, security and guard dogs rendering it useless to anyone.
Certainly there were times when the language of demonstrators was inflammatory and abusive towards police. Arrests were often met with shouts of "Scum!" at police, which did nothing to calm the situation or advance the cause, particularly given police were frightened due to being clearly outnumbered by demonstrators. But while verbal violence went both ways, physical violence only went one way.
One chant Mr Doyle neglected to mention was, "The whole world is watching!" And thanks to mobile phones and social media, now the world knows what happens in Melbourne to those who express dissent for more than a day or two. Mr Doyle has embarrassed our state and our respected police force, by sending them in to do a job they should never have done. As a result of this overly aggressive 'strategy', the Occupy movement has attracted more sympathisers. They will return, and their numbers will only grow.
"The city must return to normal at some point," Mr Doyle declares. Whether you think "normal" is desirable depends largely on where you stand. In a country where more than 100,000 people go homeless every night while a small minority own billions, normal is precisely the problem this movement is decrying.
Many people have tried to justify police violence under the rubric of the occupiers' refusal to leave City Square voluntarily. Yet civil disobedience is a perfectly legitimate expression of political dissent in a democracy. As Lord Hoffman said in the UK House of Lords, "Civil disobedience on conscientious grounds has a long and honourable history… It is the mark of a civilised community that it can accommodate protests and demonstrations of this kind." There was nothing civilised about the way police were used on Friday. Why send the riot squad to quell something that was never remotely riotous? Escalation of conflict and intimidation are the only answers, and were clearly the intent, to discredit and frighten what has been a peaceful occupation of a public space by a broad range of Melburnians.
"Where you stand determines what you see." Unfortunately Mr Doyle never actually attended the camp himself, so his perspective is less informed than it could have been, but if he thinks this movement - which has expressions in more than 1,500 cities around the world - are a "tiny number" he clearly stands with the 1 per cent, not the 99.
Simon Moyle @'ABC'
Rev Simon Moyle is an ordained Baptist minister with the GraceTree Community in Coburg. He is a nonviolence trainer with Pace e Bene Australia.
Meanwhile...interesting timing no?
Murder probe after man found burned and beaten to death in Scotland
Stuart Walker, 28, who suffered “horrific injuries” had been out with friends earlier in the night.
Police have said they were not ruling out the possibility that his death was the result of a homophobic attack.
Strathclyde Police confirmed his body had scorch marks and that he had suffered terrible injuries.
Mr Walker’s body was found tied to a lamppost near the Caponacre Industrial Estate in Ayrshire at 5am on Saturday morning by a member of the public.
He was last seen alive by a family friend near the fire station in Glaisnock Street at about 2:30am on Saturday.
Police said there were several house parties in a nearby housing estate in the early hours of Saturday morning and appealed for anyone with information to come forward.
Detectives yesterday launched a murder inquiry following the discovery.
A spokeswoman for Strathclyde Police confirmed that following a post mortem, they were treating the death of Mr Walker of Hearth Place, Cumnock, as murder.
She said that Mr Walker had not “died from his burns” and had been subjected to “a horrific attack”.
Last night detectives were conducting door-to-door inquiries and studying CCTV footage in an attempt to piece together Mr Walker’s final hours.
Streets in the nearby industrial estate were sealed off as part of the ongoing investigation.
A spokesperson for the force said relatives of Mr Walker, the former assistant manager at the Royal Hotel in Cumnock, had been informed of his death.
Strathclyde Police would not rule out Mr Walker had been murdered because of his sexuality and were now closely examining all aspects of the victim’s life.
A spokeswoman said: “In terms of claims of his sexuality and lifestyle we are not ruling out any aspect of his life to try and identify why someone would want to kill him.”
She added: “His body was scorched but it is believed that this was not the cause of his death. We are looking at CCTV and conducting door to door inquiries.”
The officer leading the investigation, Detective Inspector John Hogg, said Mr Walker had been with friends earlier in the night.
The police officer said: “It is imperative that we find out where he was between 02:30 and 04:50 hours, who he was with and why this happened to him.”
Kazza Sutherland used to work with Mr Walker at the Royal Hotel.
She said: “Can’t believe this has happened to such a great guy. I hope they catch those who did this to him. Hopefully justice will be served and I hope those who did this go to hell.”
The popular former Cumnock Academy pupil was the subject of countless heartfelt tributes on a Facebook page set up in his honour.
Many friends have paid tribute to the popular man, including Amanda Lindsay, who said: “Poor Stuart can’t believe ur life ended in such a horrific way xx a young man who always had a smile on his face & put a smile on everybody elses face too xx I’m sure ur’s will be the brightest star in the sky xx R.I.P ma lovely.”
Claire Gardener @'The Scotsman'
Burnt man's death leaves Ayrshire community in shock
We Are All Part Of The Same Thing
“For too long, people have viewed themselves as separate and I wanted to represent a multitude of individuals using the nails, and then coloured string to show how we are all interconnected, and that together, we can make something beautiful.”
Via
The Full Walter Isaacson/Steve Jobs Interview From 60 Minutes
Part 1
Part 2
The Steve Jobs Family photo album
What did Steve Jobs say about his rivals?
CBS has posted the full 60 Minutes interview with Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson, including a number of extras that weren't included in the broadcast piece. The double-length interview promotes Jobs' authorized biography which goes on sale tomorrow in the United States, and is already available on iBooks in some parts of the world.
Via
attackerman attackerman
There is nothing easier you will ever do to combat child malnutrition than click Like on this@50cent project. bit.ly/q6RP58 Pls RT
There is nothing easier you will ever do to combat child malnutrition than click Like on this
Clinton on Gaddafi: We came, we saw, he died
Protip for Hillary: when trying to convince people we're bringing them democracy via bombs, don't quote a Roman Emperor
Via
SultanAlQassemi Sultan Al Qassemi
The Islamic Republic of Libya
@algergawi @sultanalqassemi That is a total misreading of what happened today. No one calling for an Islamic republic of Libya
The Islamic Republic of Libya
Abdulkhaleq_UAE Abdulkhaleq Abdulla
NewtonMark Mark Newton
Purely advisory in Australia, of course. :-/ RT@nazzer: Thinking about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at un.org/en/documents/u…
Purely advisory in Australia, of course. :-/ RT
Sunday, 23 October 2011
Conflicted thoughts: on Occupy Melbourne
Like just such an ass, Melbourne Lord Mayor, Robert Doyle (backed by Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu) outdid the stupidity of even the dumbest, least-informed Occupy Melbourne protestor by sending in a TRG police unit and mounted police to evict peaceful protestors from City Square early last Friday, 21/10/2011.
For righteous ranting specifically designed to entertain, you’re better off heading to Geoff Lemon’s Heathen Scripture blog entry, where Doyle gets the serve he certainly deserves, with the customary vitriolic verbal pyrotechnics. Subtle Geoff is not; entertaining, he is. /Yodacadence
I’ll get onto my thoughts about the City’s response in a bit, but first I want to look at the limitations of the Occupy movement in the Australian context and ask, like several others did, here and here: do we need to express the Occupy ideals in this country at all? (for the purposes of this discussion taking Wall Street as the prototypical case, even if Spain’s protest has been running longer).
Are we really the 99%..?
Continue reading
yerknickers @'DYLADAD'
(Thanx Chris!)
The deification of Steve Jobs is Apple's greatest marketing triumph to date
I had an iPhone but I was relieved to lose it because it swallowed so much of my time in pointless ways. I enjoyed following myself down a street, as a dot on a map, for instance, but all I was really doing was being both CIA operative and target in a tiny movie of my own life. I also think, as others have noted, that the products look like children's toys. Beautiful simplicity, say the fans, but more simple than beautiful, made for CBBC. The equivalent 40 years ago would have been blind adherence to the ideology of Habitat.
But I am in a minority. Jobs's death has stopped the clock. As the corpse cooled, all aspects of his life and legacy were detailed by a prostrate media. He is now, just a little too late to enjoy it, the world's most famous man, one pixel short of saviour. His memorial service last Sunday was covered by the broadsheets, who reported that the golden triumvirate of Bill Clinton, Stephen Fry and Bono appeared to mourn and rend their garments. This made me laugh, I am afraid, because if the question "Which global celebrities are most likely to attend the memorial service of Steve Jobs?" was asked on Family Fortunes the top answers would surely be – Bill Clinton, Stephen Fry and Bono. Who else could it be?
Some of the mourners, appropriately, tweeted their loss, which I am sure Jobs would appreciate, being the world's chief facilitator of manufactured emotions in 140 characters or less. The more general population, who are practised in responding to the media's idiocies, obediently responded. They were told they have lost something precious, and so the more credulous grieved. Logos representing Jobs's death were designed, circulated, fought over and abandoned. Apple shops became instant shrines at which iPads transformed themselves into representations of flickering candles, which was chilling because, as you know, computers can't mourn. Some iPads were, bizarrely, left at the shops as an offering, as if modern gods demand not chickens, but small electrical goods, to soothe their rages. (Dear God – please restore service!) I still suspect that Apple employees left them there and retrieved them when the cameras went home. To donate a £400 iPad to a billionaire's makeshift shrine is a very un-Apple gesture, because it is unprofitable. Others left apple cores, which is merely littering with a mad sense of purpose.
How to unpick this? Grief as a global phenomenon is not new. It is essentially media-led (it fills and sells papers) and it always leaves a bitter taste, because for every stranger you think you mourn, there is a friend you forget to remember. These relationships are false and imagined and always created with the rich and powerful, which makes me wonder if it is the lifestyle, not the life, we praise when we turn to Jobs. It is ordinary bowing before power, just rather odder because the Apple products have a bright marketing sheen of democracy – we are all equal before the world wide web – which is ridiculous, considering how few can afford them and how aggressively the company protects its software.
But I have not seen it for a CEO before. Could it be that the eulogies for Jobs are a new expression of pure materialism? It is not enough to love your products; when the people who created them die, you are required to enter a kind of spiritual decline. What does it mean to weep for the inventor of the iPhone? For me it is Apple's greatest marketing triumph and the very opposite of a spiritual experience.
This is easy for Apple to manage, as newspapers inexorably ease from editorial to advertorial. There are now, quite often, double page spreads about yogurt, and worse things than yogurt. The reason is profit. Recycling press releases is cheap, because PRs are unlikely to libel their own clients. Just last week I received an invitation, via email, to plug a product which would heat my swimming pool, if I had one, which I do not. A new swimming pool heating system is not in itself news, but a news hook is attached, making a broader point in hope of making it into the paper – UK entrepreneur confirms luxury market is buoyant despite global recession. I am invited to lunch with supermarket PRs, to dine in restaurants for free and sometimes to try out beauty serums, or, as I call them, slimes. These are products in search of a page, and they are not news.
No, this the churnalism so wonderfully detailed in the Guardian journalist Nick Davies's obituary of the newspaper industry, Flat Earth News. It was rampant in the life of Jobs, and at his death it achieved a kind of apogee. Last month the New York Times ran an editorial entitled You Love Your iPhone. Literally. It argued that people respond similarly to images of the Apple logo and images of the Pope; iPhone users, the author stated, after performing tests on babies, literally loved their iPhones. I was shown this editorial by a PR. Even he was amazed that a company should get such coverage or, to give it its proper term, idiotic drooling. Again, this is odd, because the technology Jobs created is destroying newspapers. It makes me wonder if my trade has developed, en masse, Apple-themed Stockholm Syndrome. We love our murderer.
The truth? In many ways Apple is just another very profitable company, which in July announced that its revenues were $28.57bn, up 90% year-on-year, with profits of $7.31bn, up 124% year-on-year. It is visionary in its products and marketing techniques, but conventional in its working practices and goals. It is, like most world-munching corporations, a feudal hierarchy. There is nothing visionary in transferring the manufacture of your products from the US to China, and subcontracting the work to other companies, thereby circumventing labour laws, as Apple did 10 years ago. The working conditions of those who manufacture the products are appalling and ill paid. Not even the glorious design of whichever number iPhone we are on now could keep the "cluster" of suicides at the Apple supplier Foxconn's main manufacturing plant in Longhua out of the news last year. Overtime in these factory cities is often forced, not voluntary, and with every article puffing the i-Must-Embrace-the-Future-Or-Die, there will be more forced overtime as the factories race to meet demand the newspapers create. All the horrors are there, if you look for them. According to China Labour Watch, Apple pays just £3.99 for the production of your £600 iPhone, and it is the workers who pay for their – and our – greed, so we can tweet and be moving dots on a map. As Mike Daisey said, also in the New York Times, Jobs could have done something about this. He could have really changed the world. He chose not to.
Tanya Gold @'The Guardian'
HA!
LettersOfNote Shaun Usher
Sports Illustrated gave Kurt Vonnegut a job in '54. 1st day, he was told to write about a racehorse who jumped a fence & tried to escape...
Sports Illustrated gave Kurt Vonnegut a job in '54. 1st day, he was told to write about a racehorse who jumped a fence & tried to escape...
LettersOfNote Shaun Usher
Uninspired, he sat at his typewriter for an hour, typed "The horse jumped over the fucking fence," & then walked out.
Uninspired, he sat at his typewriter for an hour, typed "The horse jumped over the fucking fence," & then walked out.
WTF???
'The Battle of City Square wasn’t quite over but the result was never in doubt when a quiet policeman dropped a comment that said it all.
“Now they know we mean it,” he mused, munching a sandwich after hours of riding herd on the rag-tag coalition of protesters camped in the square.
“No more Christine Nixon stuff.”'
(Andrew Rule writing in Murdoch's Herald Sun on Saturday)
See also this...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
