"Tis no man - tis a remorseless writing machine" (1-3)
59 minutes ago
Wednesday 1 June 2011
I Think I'm Noam Chomsky
He will deliver the City of Sydney Peace Prize Lecture at Sydney Town Hall 2 November.
Melbourne International Jazz Festival Opening Celebration Concert feat Sun Ra Arkestra
Sun Ra Arkestra (USA), Chiri featuring Bae Il Dong (KOR/AUS) and the Cairo Club Orchestra (AUS)
The Melbourne International Jazz Festival and The Light in Winter invite you to an unmissable celebration of jazz that will have you dancing into the twilight! Rain, hail or shine, the 2011 Festival officially kicks off with a free open-air concert at Federation Square.Be sure to bring your dancing shoes as Melbourne's own sultans of debonair, the Cairo Club Orchestra, serenade in the evening's spectacular lineup of headline artists, including the awe-inspiring Chiri featuring internationally renowned Korean pansori singer Bae Il Dong performing with Australian improvising treasures drummer Simon Barker and trumpeter Scott Tinkler, followed by a special sneak peak performance by the legendary, the notorious, the groundbreaking 'tone scientists', the Sun Ra Arkestra, making their Australian premiere performance on the eve of their sold-out Festival shows.
Federation Square - Main Stage
Sat 4 June, 3–5pm
Spaceboy and I will have our dancing shoes on down the front!
Spaceboy and I will have our dancing shoes on down the front!
How mining and media distort Australia's carbon tax debate
Given that Australia's leader of the opposition can call human-induced climate change "crap" and still enjoy a thumping lead in the opinion polls, it's perhaps not surprising that Cate Blanchett has had to endure a flurry of non-theatrical criticism this week for fronting a pro-carbon price advertising campaign.
The pillorying of Blanchett highlights the increasingly shrill tone of an Australian media that has recently come under the iron ore-tinged influence of the country's richest person – mining magnate Gina Rinehart.
For many Australians, the first cab off the rank to attack Blanchett for supporting the Labor government's carbon price was The Bolt Report, a Sunday-morning TV show hosted by News Ltd columnist Andrew Bolt.
Bolt spent the opening portion of his weekly televisual soapbox decrying the "deceitful" Blanchett ad, labelling it "crass propaganda."
He went on to call Tim Flannery, author of a new Climate Change Commission report that warns of a one-metre rise in sea levels by the end of the century, a "long-time global warming scaremonger" before insisting that the world has not warmed for a decade.
Climate change has long been a favoured topic for Bolt in print, where he is widely read in News Ltd's Melbourne and Sydney populist tabloids. His climate change denial figurehead status was confirmed when he was made the the target of a satirical 'rap' by climate scientists.
But it's only since April that Bolt has been given the platform of a TV show, on the youth-orientated Ten Network, to espouse his climate change scepticism.
Australian media commentators have pointed to the arrival of Rinehart to Ten's board as being instrumental to Bolt's sudden rise.
Rinehart was last week crowned Australia's richest person by BRW magazine, with an estimated wealth of $10.3 billion – putting Blanchett's $53 million somewhat into the shade – and she has loosened the purse strings to become a budding, if belated, media mogul.
Rinehart splashed out $120 million to buy a 10% stake in Ten in November, taking her place alongside Lachlan Murdoch on the broadcaster's board a month later.
She swiftly followed this by doubling her stake in Fairfax, the country's second largest newspaper group, to 4% in January, tantalisingly close to the 5% share that would require her to declare her interest and expose her to questions as to her sudden interest in Australia's media.
As it is, Rinehart's public comments have been sparse, but the little she has said has been pored over by environmental groups concerned over her tightening grip on two of Australia's main media outlets.
After the Ten deal, she said in a statement: "Our company group is interested in making an investment towards the media business given its importance to the nation's future and has selected Ten Network for this investment."
Given the fevered debate over the proposed introduction of a carbon price, which has been furiously attacked by the opposition Coalition and the resources sector, there appears to be little ambiguity in the phrase "the nation's future", nor Rinehart's position in the debate.
Many Australians' enduring image of Rinehart came during the ructions caused by last year's proposed tax on the resources sector, when she clambered upon the back of a pick up truck, resplendent in pearls, to bellow "Axe the tax" during a rally.
In an opinion piece published in a mining industry magazine this month, Rinehart was more explicit over her aims, saying:
"Some mainstream media like to attack me because I speak out against a carbon tax.Rinehart chairs Hancock Prospecting, a resources company founded by her father Lang Hancock in 1952. It has significant iron ore interests in the Pilbara region of Western Australia and has embarked upon large-scale thermal coal projects in Queensland.
"It's a pity more business executives don't speak out, because this proposal should have been dropped long ago.
"Remember when the mainstream media was running frightening commentary about carbon-induced global warming?
"We read and heard about how oceans would rise, flooding our homes, and how, over years, we'd be scorched due to the increasing heat.
"Have you noticed that we don't hear much any more about global warming?
"There will always be changes that affect our climate, even if we close down all thermal-fired power stations, steel mills and other manufacturing operations, putting employees out of work and drastically changing our way of life.
"I am yet to hear scientific evidence to satisfy me that if the very, very small amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (approximately 0.83 per cent) was increased, it could lead to significant global warming."
She has also formed Australians for Northern Development and Economic Vision, a lobby group that includes prominent geologist and climate sceptic Ian Plimer.
Aside from opposing the resources and carbon taxes, Rinehart has grumbled at how Australia "drowns" in environmental regulations and has called for an influx of cheap foreign labour to the country's sparsely populated northwest.
She even helped fund the bizarre speaking tour of climate sceptic Lord Monckton, who travelled from his Highlands estate to traverse Australia in January.
Monckton's tour saw him receive a $20,000 stipend as well as the organisational help of Rinehart's office when he arrived in Perth.
He used the tour to claim in an opinion piece for The Australian that "thoughtful" politicians were "privately, quietly" questioning conventional thinking on climate change. He is set for another trip Down Under in July.
Rinehart is not fighting a lone battle against carbon pricing. Sydney's Sunday Telegraph, which ran the now-infamous 'Carbon Cate' headline in the wake of Blanchett's ad, is representative of News Ltd titles' opposition to the tax, which critics claim will drive up energy prices and decimate Australian industry.
The increasing vitriol aimed at the Greens, which has pushed for the carbon price in return for its support of the minority Labor government, recently led to the party's leader Bob Brown labelling the Murdoch press the "hate media."
Throw into the mix a group of grumpy, but extremely popular, radio 'shock jocks' who are vehemently opposed to the carbon price and it's unsurprising that the latest polling shows only 38% of the Australian public back the plan.
Perhaps more worryingly for green groups, the proportion of people that agree that climate change is caused by human activity recently slipped below 50% for the first time. A further decline in this number will present a decent return on investment for Rinehart.
Oliver Milman @'The Guardian'
Prominent journalist dies in targeted killing in Pakistan
Syed Saleem Shahzad, right, with Pakistani journalist Qamar Yousafzai at the Afghan border in 2006. The two had been detained for several days by the Taliban. (AP/ Shah Khalid)
The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed and angered by the targeted killing of senior Pakistani journalist Saleem Shahzad, the Pakistan bureau chief of the Asia Times online website. Shahzad, considered an expert on Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants, disappeared on Sunday night as he was on his way to participate in a talk show on Dunya Television, media reports said. His body, showing signs of torture, was later found outside Islamabad, according to local and international media reports. Pakistan had the most journalists deaths in the world in 2010. On World Press Freedom Day (May 3), a CPJ delegation met with President Asif Ali Zardari and Interior Minister Rehman Malik and several other members of the government to press for a reversal of the abysmal record of impunity with which journalist are killed in Pakistan. The country ranks 10th on CPJ's global Impunity Index.
"President Zardari and Interior Minister Malik each personally pledged to address the vast problem of uninvestigated and unprosecuted targeted killings of journalists in Pakistan," said Bob Dietz, CPJ's Asia program coordinator. "With the murder of Saleem Shahzad, now is the time for them to step forward and take command of this situation."
Shahzad, who wrote Inside al-Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11, had recently reported in an Asia Times article, "Al-Qaeda had warned of Pakistan strike," that members of Al-Qaeda conducted the May 22 attack on a naval air station in Karachi. In 2006, he was held for five days by Taliban forces in Afghanistan's Helmand province.
Shahzad's death is the third this year in which a journalist was clearly killed because of his work. Nasrullah Khan Afridi died when his car blew up in Peshawar, and popular TV reporter Wali Khan Babar was gunned down on January 13 in Karachi. At least one other reporter, Naveed Kamal with the local news channel Metro One TV, has survived a targeted attack, with a gunshot through his jaw.
CPJ counts 15 cases of journalists apparently targeted for their journalism in Pakistan since the 2002 killing of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. None of their killers have been brought to justice.
@'CPJ'
MrChuckD Mistachuck
Feeding the masses sht on a silver tray,w piss in a labeled bottle.Regardless how it's dressed up & packaged it's still gonna taste like...
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