Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

After twelve years of Webdiary, it's time to hang up the green eyeshades.

I can't tell you how I know, but I was informed that the NATO missiles were on their way round ten minutes before the rest of the world heard it.  Sitting on my couch, with the laptop on its arm, watching the live al Jazeerah feed, I witnessed what I'd read as a Facebook message on my comp become reality on a TV screen.

It was all based on a confused mixture of imperialism and delusion.  The Taliban are a creation of the United States whose objective was to destroy the secular society established by a socialist or communist government with the support of the USSR.

China has illegitimately, purely because vastly more powerful, taken possession of Tibet and oppressed the Tibetan race and almost extinguished Tibetan culture for the bogus reason that both Tibet and China were conquests of the Mongol empire.  When Marco Polo visited China it was to the court of Kublai Khan that he gravitated, because China was perhaps the most important part of the Khan's empire and he spent a lot of time there.

Certainly if Assange could be  prevented from gaining asylum, it makes it so much more difficult to re-establish the rights of others also seeking asylum, elsewhere ( which could partly also explain the Australian government's timid response to Assange's plight).

The other need for local military enforcement's about to disappear too.  Supposedly we're supposed to start mining the one third of the world's known uranium that's nestling in the SA desert.  The trouble is that with the high Aussie dollar and the cashflow nervousness the European "financial wobbles" have created, it's apparently not a good time to go uranium mining.  The sackings last week by Rio Tinto of a large number of its Sydney and Melbourne office staff are the best indicator of our local mining future.

I've never seen so much media at a protest, I guess the media and the cops were waiting for us to cause trouble. They were mostly disappointed. This protest was generally peaceful (except for those idiot gate breakers). There were almost as many police as protesters and a kind of PA informing us as we entered the protest zone that we were entering a 'protected area' and would have to follow police directive, this was neither here nor there for me until I wanted to leave.

Last weekend I set up a community radio station on Facebook. Called it Adelaide Community Tubes, invited folks to create their own playlist.  How easy to create, on a Saturday night, a "radio station" of people, however isolated in the own homes, sharing music together?   It's the combination of words and pictures and thoughts, and perhaps by sharing music at the same time being on similar frequencies.. and maybe a bit of what cyberspace could do with a bit more of?

As a matter of simple logic (something I think I'm a bit better at, despite the last sentence), the reactions of the Australian political class to those few deaths, whether or not those reactions are genuine, are in their own way spectacular and instructive.  And edifying.

" The land the lizard and the creatures of this earth are summoning everybody who gives a shit to the gates of Roxby Downs on the 14th of july 2012 for The Lizards Revenge - This is an open invitation to all people and a special call out to artists, musicians and activist community groups and media to get involved in the creation of this autonomous zone for the peace and healing of this land."

I’ll never forget her birth. I tossed off an opener and lo and behold, a few people responded. One of the first was the mercurial David Davis. And he still loves her too.

All in all, an awful state of affairs for Australia and our democracy. So what is the solution? The way I see it, the various independent online media groups need to get together, pool their resources, and step up to a genuine media alternative to the dregs of Fairfax and Murdoch. Academic institutions engaged in media would also be around the table, as I’d see links with journalism students in the new group.

Nevertheless it is true for most of us that for the immediately foreseeable future that whatever we publish online isn’t going to go away, and, more significantly, is going to be searchable in a way that microfiche of a newspaper archive is not.

Trevor died on Monday of pancreatic cancer, and will be buried tomorrow.  In his memory here's a reprint of his last Webdiary piece.

By dipping into that credit the United States could finance the means to force recovery, and obtain massive side benefits. I realise the U.S. has lost heart, doesn't have the will for anything of the kind, but let's fantasize.

What I'm wondering might be of particular interest is the fact that Labor's first two motions against the Libs (that Pyne and Bishop not be heard) were beaten by five votes at Division

Since then it's been a thousand years
a hundred lands of joys and tears
In every generation's eyes
I look for her, to apologise

"I would also like to inform you today that the autonomous Management and Standards Committee, which was established by the Company to ensure full cooperation with all investigations, has completed its review of The Times and The Sunday Times, assisted by outside counsel, Linklaters. We found no evidence of illegal conduct other than a single incident reported months ago, which led to the discipline of the relevant employee." -Rupert Murdoch

This is a strange game of poker, in which the slightly dodgy reputations of both these men have been the fulcrum of a Gillard parliamentary majority, and many cards played in attempting to bluff both into "folding".

" So I can assure you, like I am today, I will be out there in the public debate explaining the purpose for why we are in Afghanistan, how it is in the national interests of Australians for us to be there, how we went there, motivated by the terrorist attacks we saw on 9/11, but understanding that these attacks, attacks which took Australian lives and the attacks that subsequently flowed, found their training in Afghanistan, their support in Afghanistan. That's why we went, as well as, of course, standing by our ally the United States of America." - PM Julia Gillard

The state can't employ police to play games with their own lives.  If a policeman is confronted by a man armed with a knife and within lunging distance we have the only situation in which new disabling technology such as Tasers or capsicum spray might have a place. Without them the policeman must fire his pistol and shoot to kill.  If he has a Taser or capsicum spray perhaps there is an alternative, We now have an ambiguous situation. 

Now I don't just mean, "Oh, they don't like workers" or "they'll be worse for the environment", though these things are true. I mean that this group of people do not have everyday competence.

The weird thing is that Abbott opposes the company tax cut, but opposes the mining tax. Apart from the weirdness of the ideological implications here, how is right to keep taxes high for struggling employers, yet not tax a an industry rolling in money?

" Bob Carr will join the Senate, and will take on the role of Minister for Foreign Affairs. Until he takes his place in the Senate, Craig Emerson will continue to act as Minister for Foreign Affairs." - PM Gillard

And as for the aforementioned "small 'l's" who hoped Turnbull could step into the fray and save their ideology.. forget it!  With Labor destroying itself, Tony's numbers will be quite secure.. why replace him when his opposition is imploding?

Look at what the good guys, the Russians, are doing.  They seem ready to help Assad work though the problems besetting the country and put such reforms in place as will allow all citizens to enjoy similar human rights, but do it realistically, doing what is feasible in the social and historical context.

"I will gladly pay the cost of a ticket to help you pay your way back to Iraq. When you get there , and if you manage to survive for being as outspoken as what you are here in Australia , then you should be able to help straighten out the mess which YOUR Iraqi countrymen have got you into in the first place , which appears to be the reason that you have come to MY country to avoid.'

One of the very scarce reports on what is going on in prisons in Papua came earlier from Oswald Iten, a journalist with the Swiss quality paper Neue Zuercher Zeitung, who was imprisoned in Jayapura for twelve days in December 2000. He had allegedly violated the conditions related to his tourist visa (he had been making photographs and since he was a journalist that counted as working without a work permit). I can’t recall that that report got much attention in this country...