On Gaza
https://twitter.com/afalkhatib/status/1783984923440996615?t=kIaHvL0P5e8Te-1mSRU7Tg&s=19

Broelman’s best ever cartoon.

I came across this in my news feed, never heard of him I must confess, not having been trained in economic theory, for which I am forever grateful

Still an interesting read, what grabbed my attention was the relationship between society, state and markets.

There, in my opinion, cannot be an unfettered free for all “free markets”.
It would destroy civil society.

But at the same time there should be limits as to how far the state can control. (Specially support, manipulate preferred entities.)

Via Tom

In March, Justice Angus Stewart dismissed an attempt to eliminate a wide range of evidence proposed by the deputy Greens leader for the trial.

This included expert reports on racism and the phrase “go back to where you came from”,

If “go back to where you came from” is a waysissst saying, how can nations be “de-colonised”?

In today’s Oz.

James Allan
Why Elon Musk is right to fight politics of online censorship

How many readers remember back to May 2020 when George Floyd was killed in police custody in Minneapolis? 

There were minutes-long videos of this event, all confronting and violent. These videos no doubt played a part in having one of the police officers involved convicted of murder for Floyd’s death. And all of us could watch these videos on social media online and make up our own minds. 

What readers will not recall is any push to have the videos removed from all the main online platforms. That’s because none of the great and good – no eSafety Commissioner nor anyone else – ever pushed for this sort of censorship of the online content. 

So confronting violence, indeed an actual filmed killing, and still no push to remove the content. Because it was true content. And presumably it was also because many believed people could be left to decide for themselves what that content indicated. Oh, and by the way, one of the direct effects of this Floyd video was months and months of violent riots across many US cities. But the long-term benefits of free speech and open access to the truth trumped all such considerations.

Now, put that to one side for a moment and turn to the current fight between Elon Musk and the Albanese government (supported by eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant) over the latter’s desire that X remove the video of the stabbing of the bishop in the Assyrian church in Sydney. 

The commissioner and the government, and even sections of the Coalition, want the video taken down under threat of severe financial penalties. They want censorship of this video. Thus far the owner of X, Elon Musk, is saying no.

I agree with Musk. Here’s why. 

First off, all talk of this video being misinformation or disinformation is nonsense if not deliberate misdirection. In simple terms, misinformation is the jargony word for information that is believed to be false and inaccurate, together with a further calculation that it is likely to cause harm if the wider public has access to it. 

Disinformation is all that plus the further allegation that the falsity is deliberate.You could just say “that is factually wrong” for the first and “it is a lie” for the second. But censorship works better under the aegis of jargon and bureaucratese so people aren’t wholly sure what is being alleged. So the first point to make here is that the Assyrian church video is not conveying false information. (In fact, the bishop himself opposes the removal of the video on the grounds of free speech).

It is patently true information, just as the George Floyd video was. We watchers might draw differing conclusions from it. But there is no falsity about it; nor is anyone alleging it was staged or fake. So when Anthony Albanese describes the video in terms of “misinformation”, he is extending that term to include true information. The eSafety Commissioner and the PM, and even Dutton, want to remove online content that is true and accurate. Again, it’s hard to say that in clear terms so they resort to obfuscation and the language of “misinformation”.

Now of course there can be instances when a cost-benefit analysis leads us to conclude that true information should be withheld from the wider public. 

I can certainly think of things, true things, that I would nevertheless take down from the internet – a recipe for making biological weapons out of things you’d find in your kitchen; the names of active undercover police agents who have infiltrated crime syndicates; and so on. 

This video, however, does not come close to any of those. It looks a lot like the case of the George Floyd video. The difference here is that the government doesn’t like the truth the video is conveying. With the Floyd videos it did. There seem to be favoured and disfavoured groups. Heck, it’s not even the case that the Assyrian church video will lead to anything like the months and months of destructive riots we saw in the US after the Floyd videos.

Nor is there any plausibility to comparing this church video to pedophilia or the sort of obscenity I would support being removed as online content. What those who support the removal of true and publicly important content from the online platforms need to tell us is why the harms so massively outweigh the public’s right to know that censorship is warranted. 

With my examples of biological weapons and police undercover agents, it’s pretty easy to do that. With this video, given all the other online violent true content from the Sydney Opera House to many BLM incidents that no one censors, Musk is right. It should stay online.

Here’s another factor. We have just lived through 2½ years of the greatest inroads on our civil liberties in perhaps two centuries. The government and public health caste labelled all sorts of dissenting views as misinformation, yet those views proved to be true. Think of where the virus came from; whether vaccines stopped the contracting and transmission of the disease; the effectiveness of masks; the long-term costs of school closures; the effects on our economy; the list goes on. 

Yet these were nevertheless labelled misinformation and attempts were made to silence those who spoke these things. Then there was the voice. The official fact-checkers labelled all sorts of claims by the No case to be wrong when, in my professional view as a constitutional lawyer, none was. Not one. It really was virtually one-way fact-checking, too.
In a liberal democracy you should be incredibly wary to censor anything as what will prove to be true is hard to know at the time. But when it comes to what you know already to be patently true, you should have to meet an incredibly high standard before doing so. And it should be a standard that is neutral between political points of view. Neither is the case here so I’m with Musk on this one. 

And, as a conservative, I also think it’s a bad political mistake for some in the Libs to be throwing their lot in with the censors and those who downplay the benefits of free speech.

Loading up your kids with white guilt and self hate. Another generation of young leftist activists to pour out of our schools.Sicktoria.

The Premier said she saw an opportunity coming to see the truth and tell it, as well as look at the ways in which school curriculums could be strengthened when teaching Indigenous affairs.

ZK2A,

Have you seen any reputable reviews of this book? E book out now , hardcover on 9 May.

The Traitor of Arnhem: WWII’s Greatest Betrayal and the Moment That Changed History Forever 

Doing the usual and forgetting the thread change, so here’s my morning’s worth from ye olde fred.

Re Aboriginal men and violence against women:

There is a cultural issue here to be addressed too. Violence against women was an integral component of traditional aboriginal culture. From my reading of “Commonwealth of Thieves’ by Tom Keneally, a basic leftie who concentrates whole chapters on the condition of aborigines in the first four years of Sydney, drawing on reports untampered by later ages, it is patently clear that aboriginal women lived in a culture of vicious violence towards them for a myriad of imagined slights and cultural wrongs, including sorcery. They were also sexual chattels, traded, raped and fought over. Anthropological studies, in the days before that discipline went ‘woke’, also showed this, even though more attention was paid in recent times to women’s own ritual life; but the violence still permeates the reports.

In modern times this violence has been sustained and even enhanced by a poor sense of worth in aboriginal men confined to the fringes of employment or made completely dependent in remote ‘community’ hellholes. Extolling the virtues of aboriginal ‘culture’ is something that should cease. Bring in some more Christian teachers and clergy to help out. Churches should start a big and government-approved campaign to get more converts into the peaceful associative traditions of Christian life. Self-worth can help to destroy welfare dependence. I am not joking.

Old working class cultures could also be violent towards women, although it tended to be socially condemned, particularly by Christian men, who also saw women’s protection enhanced by modesty and by what one old bloke in the 60’s described to me as ‘the marriage lines’, i.e. the vows made. Men also used to sign ‘the pledge’ against drinking promoted by the temperance movement, very big in the later years of the C19th and early C20th.
Endorsing marriage and moderate or no drinking is also an interesting trend seen in some of todays young people. Pendulums swinging from the 60’s?

——

Here’s a history of the Temperance Movement in Australia. Link is Wiki if it doesn’t work. It contributed to some restrictions on alcohol use which became far too onerous for most voters, and never reached the heights of prohibition, as it did in the US.

Most such ‘moral’ movements stem from situations that have become dire and out of control, such as the heavy use of spirits rather than beer and wine in the US during the post-War exuberant culture of the Roaring Twenties and the Hollywood Era reaching into small towns everywhere. Drug use – amphetamines and heroin in particular – have reach similar proportions of harm in many Australian rural towns and amongst homeless populations in urban areas.

I am not arguing for any particular responses, many are possible and some are working, others have failed, but they will arise ‘organically’ from within communities the worse it gets. The exception is aboriginal remote communities where so many cards are stacked against the few – mainly elderly women – who try to resist the tide of abuses.

Those sociopathic feckers at my former employer, Queensland Health, are continuing to harass me for a fabricated ‘overpayment’ of just over $10,000, for part of the 2.5 year period when I was stood down without pay due to my unwaxxed status (the last nine months of which was perpetuated without formal authority).

Having explained repeatedly that the fraud they alleged was impossible for me to conduct due to my lack of access to the relevant software (a point easily and quickly proven by searching the I.T. access records), they are nevertheless persisting in attempting to extort from me the sum mentioned above. (Which I don’t owe, and certainly don’t possess after they stole approximately $95,000 from me in terms of lost wages, super, etc).

Raising the issue of a gross breach of the Qld Public Service Code of Conduct with my state (Lieboral) member met with a ‘Yeah, whatever’ response, and now QH are threatening me with legal action.

At a time when my hours at my new job have dropped to zero, this harassment is not helping either my physical or mental health. I am very, very tempted to write assertive emails to certain people, but I know that will only get me a mention on a ‘special people’ list.

Breathe, Muddy, just breathe.

(I’m not seeking sympathy, as I know many have their own problems. I did want to vent, however, and remind people that regardless of their party, none of our political reps give a toss about anyone other than themselves and how much they can strip from the public purse).

Haha, student Nazis are starting to realize that outing oneself as a proud genocidal Nazi is not conducive towards future employment.

Pro-Hamas Protesters Seek Amnesty, Pardons to Protect Careers (28 Apr)

Some of the students who were arrested are now waking up to a harsh bit of reality, however. Their actions have consequences that can follow them long after they finish their time on campus. With that in mind, some of them have a new set of demands. They are calling for amnesty and the erasure of their arrest records and student records revealing that they have been suspended. …

As noted above, the students are fearful that their arrest records and suspensions will “follow them into their adult lives.” Based on their recent actions, I realize that we’re not dealing with the fastest set of tractors on the farm here, but I have a news flash for these rioters. Nearly every one of you is at least 18 years old and some of the juniors and seniors are in their twenties. You are already in your “adult life,” despite the fact that you’re not acting in a very mature fashion. 

At least they’ve now learned something at university, there is that.