Completely Unnecessary

…for not posting.

I mean, it does. I know that more than one of you check this blog regularly for new and (ahem) insightful content.

But I can’t control your poor life choices.

So I’ve been tempted this week to blog about the lovely and soul-inspiring weddings of biddies - because obviously that’s awesome.

I think if you can’t be happy for 80+-year-old women getting married you don’t really understand what life is about. There’s fundamental level at which you don’t understand happiness.

[Ed. note - Um, Firefox 3, vaguely appealing though it is, does not seem to have incorporated spellcheck in a timely manner. This is absolutely disastrous for your editor, who can't spell her way out of a very small shoebox.] [Oh thank crap, it kicked back in; I had spelled disastrous wrong. I'm more of a big picture kind of girl.]

Anyway, I’ve been sick and also working/marking/watching Angel, so it’s really a grab bag of reasons why I’ve lacked the wherewithal to fulfill the blogging duties that - I will remind you - come with little to no financial reward.

I had something to say. I think it was this:

I know the Administration only has a short number of months (yay!) left in office, but this doesn’t mean that they should drive down their game.

It will potentially frighten several of you to learn that my father is a Republican. Not of the truly alarming variety - he just believes in lower taxes, etc, etc. (whereas I believe in stealing from the rich, etc., etc.).

Anyway, he sends me an article last week in which George Will (displaying the youngest picture GenXers have ever seen of George Will) is all about drilling in ANWAR and everywhere offshore because the Chinese are already doing it.

Eh, they’re not.

But, if the story gets repeated enough times, it looks like good enough impetus for Bush to advocate drilling off all our coastlines a few days later. The NYT, however, is not so impressed with that, considering it won’t lower gas prices until 2030.

But hey - talking points trotted out in the press ten days before they become ‘policy’ is just typical. Could these guys try anymore? I mean, where are those bold policy suggestions of yore? Isn’t there a country we should think about invading?

Oh, or is it just that we’ve gotten lazy, considering the oil contracts with one that we’ve already invaded?

Personally, I’m happier thinking about old ladies getting married.

Congrats to them and everyone taking the plunge (especially to Elissa and Keith, who I love with all my heart… even though they’re not gay. It’s not, like, a definite criteria for my support of your union).

Vaguely Related

• Justice Kennedy Back In Fine Form
• Zimbabwe Election Redux

I know I’m behind the times; on the upside, I know far more about Australian irrigation, catchment levels and the Murray-Darling scheme than I’d ever hoped to learn.

Anyway, onto Justice Kennedy, who reasserted himself as my favorite Supreme Court justice after a lengthly period on my shit list. Writing the Opinion (.pdf) in Boumediene v. Bush (the case that gave Gitmo detainees their rights back) he said:

Although the United States has maintained complete and uninterrupted control of Guantanamo for over 100 years, the Government’s view is that the Constitution has no effect there, at least as to noncitizens, because the United States disclaimed formal sovereignty in its 1903 lease with Cuba. The Nation’s basic charter cannot be contracted away like this. The Constitution grants Congress and the President the power to acquire, dispose of, and govern territory, not the power to decide when and where its terms apply. To hold that the political branches may switch the Constitution on or off at will would lead to a regime in which they, not this Court, say “what the law is.”

I feel that ‘Snap!’ doesn’t properly represent the the six years of illegality under which these detainees have been held.

Kennedy first won his way into my heart via his Opinion in 1993’s Church of the Lukumi Babalu-Aye v. City of Hialeah:

Our review confirms that the laws in question were enacted by officials who did not understand, failed to perceive, or chose to ignore the fact that their official actions violated the Nation’s essential commitment to religious freedom… No one suggests, and on this record it cannot be maintained, that city officials had in mind [as the target of their ordinances] a religion other than Santería.

I might not always agree with him, but the man does not mince words, which I respect more than most things. The Hialeah ruling is like series of uppercuts to the judge below him - awesome.

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Turns out that last October’s comments by then-Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews about Africans not ’settling and adjusting’ were contrary to departmental advice.

He was told that socio-economic problems (unsurprisingly) played more of a role than ethnicity in criminal behaviour.

Yet after the beating death of Liep Gony, an Australian citizen of Sudanese birth, Andrews saw fit to say:

I have been concerned that some groups don’t seem to be settling and adjusting into the Australian way of life as quickly as we would hope and therefore it makes sense to put the extra money in to provide extra resources, but also to slow down the rate of intake from countries such as Sudan. (Age, 2 Oct.: 2)

Ironically, Andrew’s comments came on the same day that it ‘emerged that Mr Gony’s alleged attackers were not African’ - as the Age persists in phrasing it. His alleged murderers were, in fact, white and Australian-born.

In a paper I just wrote on the Gony affair, I argued that media framing set the stage for Andrews’ comments by portraying Gony’s death as part of a continuing ‘refugee crisis’ in Australia.

The reporting was strikingly similar to that of other ‘crises’, such as the Tampa and ‘Children Overboard‘. In 2001, the Howard Government used these incidents to encourage ethnic and immigration tensions for political purposes and was reelected.

In the paper, I said:

While this paper does not imply that Andrews had cynical motivations for his comments, if the Minister had been looking for a Tampa-esque moment, he could be excused for believing the time was ripe.

Now that we know that Andrews specifically acted against departmental advice, it seems less likely that his comments were innocent in nature.

Papers at the time noted that Andrews’ explanation above did not match with the rationale his department had previously given for cuts in the intake of African refugees, and this seems like the final nail in the coffin.

Here were are again, six months after an election, finding out damning information about another of these pre-election, race-baiting events.

Andrews was specifically told that ethnicity was not the problem, but he went ahead and made statements that whipped up ethnic tensions in Noble Park - to the tune of a beaten Sudanese refugee on the 10th and a bashed police officer on the 11th.

Thank god it wasn’t to the tune of another term in power.

Race row we didn’t have to have [The Age]

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What a sad state of affairs when it’s preferable to be imprisoned in the jail of a desperate dictator than fall into the hands of the United States:

The legal interpretation, outlined in recent letters, sheds new light on the still-secret rules for interrogations by the Central Intelligence Agency. It shows that the administration is arguing that the boundaries for interrogations should be subject to some latitude, even under an executive order issued last summer that President Bush said meant that the C.I.A. would comply with international strictures against harsh treatment of detainees.

No word on whether ‘latitude’ means going back using the definition that ‘nothing short of the pain associated with organ failure constituted illegal torture.’

Ah, the halcyon days of 2002-2004.

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I’m not really an advocate of military intervention, but maybe we could be speaking up a bit more than letting one of our envoys do the heavy lifting…

Mugabe’s party/police raided opposition headquarters:

Armed police officers raided the headquarters of Zimbabwe’s main opposition party in Harare, the capital, on Friday, arresting hundreds of people, a spokesman for the party said.
…
“These armed police have taken hundreds of people that were now staying at the party headquarters running away from the different parts of Zimbabwe, where the regime has been unleashing brutal violence,” Mr. Mlilo said in a statement.

In a later statement, the MDC said the number arrested had risen to 300 people, including all staff members.

The police searched for documents used by the opposition to support its claim it won the presidential election, and had also taken away computers, Mr. Mlilo said.

Reuters has a newer article, but some of the info seems older.

Supposedly, we’ll have results this weekend, and the nine constituencies that have recounted have remained the same.

The things we get in a tither about versus the things we ignore absolutely does my head in…

Links:
Opposition ‘Clear Victor’ in Zimbabwe, U.S. Says [NYT]
In Zimbabwe Raid, Hundreds in Opposition Party Detained [NYT]
Zimbabwe Riot Police Stage Raid [Reuters at NYT]

Vaguely Related

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This brings us to the article on politicians as TV comedians, which I think is actually the more depressing one:

None of the presidential candidates want to be seen as snooty or overeducated, which must be why on Monday all three provided taped greetings to wrestling fans watching “WWE Raw” on the USA network.

I’m going to leave the shamefulness of this statement. I’ll note only how pathetic it is that that around the world, education is seen as the thing that can lift people up, change their lives - and in the US its seen as effete and something to be hidden. As if there is somehow a thing as ‘too educated’ - call me elitist (though you might be racist if you do), but that is the single saddest comment anyone can make about the United States.

The article goes on to detail the alarmingly large number of TV appearances by the candidates. There is something disturbing about the embedded (and by this I actually mean ‘in bed’)-ness of the candidates, their wives and surrogates with the news media.

For instance, Laura Bush is serving as co-host on the ‘Today’ show. Hard news it’s not, but there’s still something alarming about the media serving as an uncritical platform (literally) for politicians. How will NBC Nightly News critique the husband of the woman who hosted their morning show? Oh wait, he’s already on Deal or No Deal.

Sure there is concern about politicians using the airwaves as cheap publicity stunts. The cheapening of our politics (and politicians), however, is only one aspect of this problem.

As this trend becomes more entrenched, the networks will be compelled to deliver these kind of political celebrity moments more and more. The problem becomes not if Bush wants to show off on Deal or No Deal, but if NBC needs to have Bush on the show. What kinds of efforts will the networks have to make to attract these guests?

Media theory around sources suggests (unsurprisingly) that one of the problems inherent in relying on government for media sourcing is that eventually the media becomes dependent on the government. They become unlikely to bite the hand that feeds them because they need access for their stories.

Control of access is incredibly powerful, which we saw this weekend in the NYT’s story about military analysts. These men admitted that they sometimes told military falsehoods to keep their Pentagon contacts happy.

If the media become dependent on government and politicians for both their news and entertainment sources, it further removes the media’s ability to be an independent watchdog.

Which brings me to a question: how do we feel about satire? The Daily Show and Colbert Report seem to be able to critique politicians in ways available to few other media outlets. The two shows have also been using politicians as guests for a number of years. A) Do you think their success is driving the trend in other media outlets? and B) Could the critical distance of these shows make them immune from the effects?

Please discuss in groups for about ten minutes, and then we’ll report back.

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What’s it’s going to take in Zimbabwe? South Africa (ANC) is finally calling for the release of election results, and Ban Ki-moon is ‘deeply concerned’ (which, by the way, NYT is calling ’strong talk’), but will any MDC (opposition) voters be around to see them?

A 15-year-old girl was abducted and beaten because Zanu-PF (Mugabe’s party) supporters suspected that her mother had voted for the MDC. When her mother went to look for her, she, too, was beaten.

[Attacked voters] are from diverse parts of rural Zimbabwe and they are a fraction of the many hundreds of people the opposition says have been assaulted as gangs of armed Zanu-PF supporters under military leadership move through the countryside, using polling station returns to identify villages where support for the opposition was strong.
…
“They said it was to teach us how to vote,” said Linus, 58. “They said: ‘It’s your own fault, voting for the opposition. That’s why we are doing all these things to you. When we have the run-off, you will know how to vote’.”

Plain sight. It really doesn’t get more audacious than this.

Few people have been killed in the beatings. It would appear that Zanu-PF has learned that deaths attract attention.

I doubt it’ll take long to move to larger-scale killings though - we’re not paying attention to terrible beatings, so why not?

Links:
Mugabe’s men take their revenge [the Age - from the Guardian]
Strong Talk About Zimbabwe at the U.N. [NYT]
South Africa Shifts on Zimbabwe, Calls For Result [Reuters]

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Well, thank god.

Yesterday [10 April, 2008] 235 Age journalists voted unanimously for a motion accusing their editor in chief, Andrew Jaspan, of degrading their ability to produce independent journalism.
…
These journalists have grown increasingly angry and desperate over recent months at what they see as an unprecedented erosion of the ideals that have guided the newspaper in the past.

The meeting included open displays of anger with the editor. In one particularly telling exchange the night news editor, Patrick Smithers effectively accused Jaspan of telling an untruth.

The meeting was in response to the Age’s coverage of Earth Hour, the content of which appears to have been driven by… promoters of Earth Hour. Journalists reportedly watched in horror and then malaise as their content was replaced by boosterism pap.

MediaWatch also ran a segment about emails from an EarthHour rep to Jaspan on Monday, 7 April.

The journalists have pledged to meet again and to protect and encourage independent journalism at the paper.

To Age journalists I say: Amen. Your writing - when I can find it beneath the gay-pedophile-hussy-teacher-child-torso-murder-shock stories these days - is still top quality. Fight Jaspan, and the readers will be behind you.

It’s behind their pay wall, but Crikey also has audio of Jaspan being told off. Zing!

The moral of the story is: beware the wrath of angry journalists; they will tell you what an ass you’re being, record it, and then pass the tapes onto a site that will play them over and over and over.

Man, I sure hope none of them have seen the website… they’re gonna be pissed.

Andrew Jaspan? 235 Age journalists can’t be wrong [Crikey via Ramon]

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Results aren’t final yet, but from polling results across the country, it appears that the Zimbabwean opposition may have actually defeated Robert Mugabe. Last time, the MDC claimed that election officials added extra votes to Mugabe’s column at the last minute, and it now appears voting boxes have gone missing in some districts.

Still, this announcement will make it harder for Mugabe to fix the results if they go against him. I don’t doubt that he will go down fighting (read: forcing his opponents to eat their own campaign posters), but there are too many results zipping around the country on mobile phones.

Also, Zimbabwe has spent the five years since the last election moving swiftly towards utter disaster, fueled mostly by Mugabe’s increasingly autocratic policies.

So, perhaps he really is on his way out:

“It’s hard for me to believe that Mugabe will go peacefully,” [community activist Mike Davis] said. “When autocrats fall, that’s the most dangerous time.”

Indeed it is. Best of luck to the people and democratic process of Zimbabwe.

Link:
Opposition Claims Win in Zimbabwe on Unofficial Tally [NYT]

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The other day, the Herald Sun ran a story about Connex’s idea to take out some of the seats on Melbourne’s trains to cram in more commuters. Luckily, that isn’t the point.

The headline they ran with the story read:

Train plan a ‘third world’ joke

Alright. That’s a terrible headline, for a whole host of reasons. I think we can all be angry at the official that unfavorably labeled a plan to put more Melburnian commuters on our trains as ‘Third World.’ I can think of a myriad of reasons why that’s offensive.

Not the least of which is that no one appears to have said it.

Ted Baillieu, leader of the opposition, is credited with the ‘joke’ comment, but no one in the article is quoted as using the words ‘third’ and ‘world’ at all.

The question then becomes whether the Herald Sun is using an unattributed quote or one they just completely made up.

For bonus points, they use the ‘quote’ in the lede as well.

Largest circulation in Australia…

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