The Dreamwidth Account

There's a lot being written about Occupy Wall Street, and a lot being written about the copycat protests which are now springing up in a lot of other countries (including Australia). There isn't as much spoken or written about where the movement to occupy city areas and public spaces, and calling for a renegotiation of the social contract as it is interpreted by the powerful, actually got started, and where it's been flourishing for the better part of a year.

It started in Egypt, in Tariq Square (where it's still ongoing, to the best of my knowledge). Occupation-style protests have been happening in Iceland, in Spain, in Greece, and in a lot of other European countries since at least June this year. And they're still going on there. See this list of articles from Pressenza to get a better idea of the scope of the actual demonstrating, both in terms of global spread, and temporal spread.

However, there appears to be this strong media (and now internet) -fed meme which says something isn't actually "real" until it affects white citizens of the USA - preferably white, middle-class, male, heterosexual Christian citizens of the USA. Unless they're affected, unless they're doing it, whatever's going on in the rest of the world doesn't matter. The global economic crisis didn't affect anyone (even though the economies of many countries were affected for months, or indeed years, before the US banking system was forced to own up to its iniquities at the end of 2008) until it affected the USAlien middle classes. Various World Wars didn't actually "start", in the opinion of hegemonic popular culture, (despite the involvement and devastation of multiple countries) until the USA sent troops. Poverty in the USA didn't exist until it started lapping at the toes of the middle classes (despite the presence of a growing underclass of persons who were born into poverty, and who have lived their entire lives in poverty, and who could not escape their poverty no matter how hard they tried, since approximately the Reagan years) and more particularly the white middle classes.

It's nice that the USAlien middle classes have apparently finally decided they're part of the world majority. It's nice that they're finally joining in with the rest of the people on the planet to demand a bit of equity, and a bit of fairness.

It would be even nicer if they would just, for once, publicly acknowledge that the problems existed before they'd noticed them or been affected by them; that the movement they've joined (and effectively hijacked) existed before they started to participate; that they were, once again, late to the party, and only joining in once other people had got things started. It would be really good to have this acknowledgement that not everything happens in a vacuum, and that the world outside the window of the USAlien white middle classes is actually present. It would be really good if the ongoing efforts of people outside the USA to renegotiate the social contract weren't erased, or ignored.

Dear Senator Cash,

My partner recently received your lovely little screed in the mail - the one about the carbon tax and how this is going to cost local employers and local industries vast amounts of money, and leave them vulnerable to excessive competition from overseas interest. You cited a total of ten companies which employed people in the electorate of Brand (or, more specifically, on the Kwinana industrial strip) by name. Curious, I decided to do a little bit of research on the internet.

Of the ten firms your leaflet mentioned by name, precisely two are actually based and headquartered here in Western Australia (Wesfarmers and Coogee Chemicals - both of which are fairly large companies). Of the rest, six are owned pretty much entirely by multi-national corporations. The other two are Australian-based, but one is based in Queensland, and the other is based in Melbourne.

To give you a quick run-down of the rest:

* BHP-Billiton is a joint Australian-Dutch company (so no, it's no longer the Big Australian, and you'll notice BHP-Billiton doesn't use that slogan any more);
* Alcoa is an alumininum mining and refining multinational firm, with the overall headquarters for the company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA;
* Tiwest is a joint-venture between two Australian subsiduary companies of two different multinational firms - Tronox Incorporated (USA) and Exxaro Resources Limited (South Africa);
* BOC is part of the Linde Group, a large German-based multinational corporation;
* Air Liquide is part of the Air Liquide group, a multinational corporation first incorporated in France, and headquartered in Paris;
* Bradken (while having a wholly Australian company name) is actually owned by a combination of Castle-Harlan Australian Mezzanine Partners (a subsiduary of Castle Harlan, a US-based private equity firm); ESCO Corporation (US owned and based multinational) and Bradken Management (as minority shareholders);

Forgive me for seeming sceptical, but aren't these multi-national corporations exactly the sorts of international competition that your leaflet is implying our local industries and employers will be attempting to match? Given this information, I doubt they'll be having huge amounts of trouble.

(Incidentally, finding all this information took me approximately thirty minutes all up. It's amazing what you can find out from the internet. The information was on the websites of the companies concerned - all it took was a few seconds on google to find each one).

I took a look down the rest of the list of "facts" you provided, and noticed you failed to mention the various tax offsets which were planned (an important part of the carbon tax package) in order to compensate average Australian householders for the increased expense. Since these offsets and compensation are being introduced at the same time as the carbon tax, not mentioning them seems a little disingenuous, to say the least. Particularly since energy bills (both domestic and industrial) in WA have already risen by at least 10% thanks to the actions of the (Liberal) state government.

You failed to mention whether carbon emissions will continue to be rising by the same amount under a carbon tax package as is currently forecast. You failed to mention whether overall carbon emissions per capita will be rising, falling, or remaining steady (and whether there are any changes expected in the size of the Australian population between now and 2020 as well). You fail to mention whether the rise in carbon emissions overall between now and 2020 (from 578 million tonnes to 621 million tonnes) will be a greater or lesser rise than the equivalent period between 2002 and now.

Your leaflet also fails to mention anywhere (a grievous omission, given your final "fact") that you, in fact, represent the political party which gave the Australian political environment the terms "Core" and "Non-Core" promises. It was the Liberal Party of Australia, under John Howard as Prime Minister, which made it excessively plain to the Australian people that the majority of political promises made by them during an election campaign were in fact "Non-Core" promises - or in other words, outright lies made in order to get elected.

I therefore find it somewhat hypocritical, to say the least, that it is the Liberal Party of Australia who are now harping non-stop on a single "broken" promise made by a member of the ALP.

(Again, this internet thingy is amazing.)

Having said all of this, here is my statement as a voter living in Brand, and a voter living in Western Australia.

I support the carbon tax as an overall good not only for people Parmelia, not only for people in Brand, but for people in Australia, and people the world over. Global climate change is occurring, and we here in the south-western corner of Western Australia have been seeing the effects of it for the past thirty years or more. Something needs to be done to at least begin to tackle the problem. The carbon tax may not be the optimum solution to the problem, but it's better than nothing.

I find the highly negative style of advertising, polling, and campaigning used by the Liberal Party of Australia to be highly offensive. The Liberal Party of Australia has a strong tendency to provide such negative statements particularly surrounding policy areas where their own solutions are lacking either in detail or in existence (I checked your party's website - the last constructive thing I can see about a climate change policy is dated almost a year ago - all the more recent stuff is basically slinging off at the ALP, without offering constructive solutions). I'd be more willing to at least listen to your side of the argument if your party showed any signs of willingness to either fish or cut bait. Instead, the Liberal Party of Australia gives the strong impression of a bunch of whiny toddlers who are sorely in need of being put down for a nap while the grown-ups get on with business.

Sincerely,

Meg Thornton (Ms)

Latest news in this ongoing disaster is that the newspaper imprint at the centre of the scandal, the News of the World, is being shut down.

Certainly, the paper has been haemorrhaging advertisers since the scandal started breaking, and as the breadth and depth of the depravity involved has been further exposed, the advertisers are running further and faster to put distance between themselves and the newspaper that published the majority of the stolen voicemail data. But I have to wonder: what about the rest of the News International/News Corporation stable?

It's worth noting that the executive who was the editor of The News Of The World at the time when most of the data theft occurred is still employed. She's now the Chief Executive of News International, and while she's offered to resign, that offer has been resisted - apparently she "knew nothing of the crimes allegedly committed when she was editor" (sourced from News of the World shuts amid hacking scandal). Which, to me, doesn't really sound like an outstanding endorsement of her managerial ability, to be honest. Either she didn't know about such things (in which case, what the hell was she doing in order to earn her salary?) or she did know and pretended she didn't (which leads me to wonder whether she'd do the same sort of thing when faced with evidence of an embezzlement), or she did know, and took steps to cover it up (which means she's criminally culpable too). She's still employed by News International.

That Ms Brooks is still considered a valuable employee by News International leads me to question the management and ethical practices of the entire damn corporation. The problem which was "resolved" by data theft didn't start in the newsroom of The News of The World. It started further up the corporate ladder, with the constant push on all the News Corporation properties to obtain ever-increasing profits, ever-growing circulation, ever-climbing advertising revenues.

Another thing which interests me is the way that the various News Corporation properties tend to pass a story around. For example, here in Australia, the Australian newspaper will report on a story which "broke" in the magazine New Idea (both of these are News Corporation properties), or they'll pass on a story which started off on Fox News in the USA, or in the Sun over in the UK. So there's the potential for the scandal to go far further than just this one newspaper. If we examine stories propagated across the News Corporation stable of properties throughout the period in which one News Corporation property was buying information obtained through data theft, how many other stories are tainted with this same brush? How far did the rot spread? How far up did the rot go? Did it go all the way to the top?

(It's worth noting that the Australian head of News Limited has officially denied that such a thing could happen over here:

Today, News Limited chief executive officer John Hartigan told the company's Australian journalists "the behaviour that has been uncovered at the News of the World is an affront to all of us who value the integrity and credibility of good journalism, the reputation of the company and our own reputations as professionals."

"Phone hacking is the antithesis of everything we stand for. It is a terrible slur on our craft," he said in a statement to staff posted online.

"I am confident that the practices that have been uncovered in the UK do not exist in Australia, at News or any other respectable media outlet." - sourced from Murdoch accused of tabloid closure 'stunt'

If, like me, you're a fan of Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister, you know never to believe anything until it's been officially denied.)

[I feel I should mention at this point that I have absolutely no monetary interest in seeing the Murdoch family go down. However, I do feel a certain moral and personal interest in the challenging of their ideology that what people are interested in is solely the cheap, the tawdry, the nasty and the unfriendly. The Murdoch family's News Corporation is a big part of the global kyriarchal bully culture, one which glorifies the petty, nasty side of the human psyche to the point where they present this as the only damn option there is. I don't want to read, watch or hear nasty comments about other people, so I don't purchase their products. Now, if only there were a viable alternative.]

I started out participating in this because I was irritated. Irritated with the whole shemozzle surrounding Julian Assagne (who, quite frankly, sounds more and more like a creep the more I hear of him or from him), irritated by the whole business of who said what, irritated by the whole dismissive tone of the arguments of Assagne's supporters. I was even more irritated with the similarity of the whole mess to the Polanski and Gibson accusations and the consequent media furore.

It seems there's a particular little syllogism which operates for many people regarding creative/progressive/liberal/left-wing people - particularly the men. It runs like this:

1) Being creative/progressive/liberal/left-wing is a positive and good thing.

2) A person who does positive and good things would never commit a crime against a person, like assault, mugging, rape or murder. Crimes against property (including intellectual property) are okay, because after all, all property is theft.

So, when a person who presents as creative/progressive/liberal/left-wing is accused of a crime against a person, there's a logical disconnect. Either the person has committed a crime against a person, in which case they cannot possibly be a person who does good and positive things (and thus cannot be creative/progressive/liberal/left-wing) or they're a creative/liberal/progressive/left-wing person, and therefore the accuser cannot possibly be correct. In these situations, it all comes down to a combination of who the accuser is and what proof they have. The best possible accuser is someone who is also creative/liberal/progressive/left-wing, preferably male, preferably white, preferably heterosexual, preferably Christian, and preferably of an equal or higher social class to the accused - in other words, someone who has a greater level of inbuilt societal privilege. The best proof is video footage, preferably from multiple sources, and preferably with a clear shot of the face of the offender.

If, however, you have a situation where, for example, a white, middle-upper class male person is being accused of a crime against a person by a non-white or female accuser, without absolutely unchallengeable proof (such as a copy of the video footage signed by God) you're going to have a situation where the accuser is going to be strongly dissuaded from laying charges in the first place. The argument is that the accuser is just trying to gain attention; just trying to bring down the person they're accusing; part of a conspiracy against them; that what happened to the accuser never happened; that the accuser is outright lying; that the accuser isn't behaving like someone who's had a crime committed against them; that the accuser provoked the crime in the first place; that the accused would never do something like that; that the accused is a good person; and finally, that the accused is creative/liberal/progressive/left-wing.

This is precisely what happened when Michael Moore went on Keith Olbermann's show to speak about why Michael Moore decided to contribute to the bail for Julian Assagne. Two ostensibly liberal, progressive journalists repeated incorrect information in front of cameras. They spread lies. Neither of them has apologised for their actions in a manner which is even half as public as the actions themselves. Keith Olbermann re-tweeted a link which named the accusers in this case; said accusers have been receiving death-threats, rape threats, and are generally being harassed something horrible, because they've had the temerity to accuse a man who is publicly perceived as being creative/progressive/liberal/left-wing of a number of crimes against persons, rather than crimes against property.

Now, rape is one of those weird little crimes - rape as we know it today wasn't prosecuted even a century ago, much less two. That's because rape as we know it today is regarded as a crime against a person. A century ago, it was regarded as a crime against property. If a woman was raped, the person who was offended against was her husband, or her father if she wasn't married, and if the prosecution went ahead, the restitution was made to either the husband or the father. Over the past century or so, progressive persons around the world have been working to alter this viewpoint, so that women have altered from being regarded as property to being regarded as persons.

Unfortunately, as the Assagne case is showing, this change hasn't really sunk in to bone-deep levels yet. Instead, when a woman tries to raise rape as a crime against a person where the perpetrator is on the creative/liberal/progressive/left-wing spectrum, it gets the same reaction as a crime against property - affronted rage that someone could possibly accuse their darling of having committed a crime at all.

Now, my own opinion is if the accusations against Julian Assagne are correct, the man stands accused of crimes against persons, crimes against property, and definitely crimes against hospitality. I don't know about anyone else, but one of the things I was raised to believe is if you're a guest in someone's home (particularly if they're offering you free accommodation), you're on your very best behaviour at all times, and you work hard to avoid causing problems. Which rather rules out assault as being on the list of acceptable guest behaviours. Of course, I was also raised to believe if someone said no to something while they were awake, they meant no to it while they were asleep as well. I also hold the apparently unreasonable belief that if your sexual partner wishes you to take an STD test, you should take one, if only to set their mind at rest. But, as I said above, the more I hear about and from Julian Assagne, the more convinced I become that whatever else he may be, the man is an utter creep.

I'm still participating in #MooreandMe because I want to change attitudes. I want crimes like rape to be regarded as crimes against people, right down to the bone, rather than "excusable peccadillo" crimes against property for the creative/progressive/left-wing/liberal type. I want enthusiastic consent to become the rule, rather than the exception. I want to reduce the lifetime risk of rape from 1 in 6 for women and 1 in 33 for men (even if it's just to 1 in 7 for women and 1 in 34 for men, it's a start). I want more.

* Because I'm female, and as such have a 1 in 6 lifetime risk of being raped.
* Because Mike Moore has made a career out of being obnoxious and demanding people listen to him; yet he won't respond to his own tactics?
* Because as a woman, as a potential rape victim, as a person who values their personal safety, I benefit greatly if rape culture is questioned and challenged (I'd benefit personally if the lifetime odds of being raped only dropped to 1 in 7). The safer I am, the safer everyone else is too.
* Because as a woman who knows other women, I'm statistically likely to know at least one person who has been raped and/or sexually assaulted in their lifetime.
* Because everything I hear about or from Julian Assagne makes him sound more and more like an utter creep.
* Because any sexual activity which happens without enthusiastic consent is rape.
* Because rape is the only crime where the accusers are on trial rather than the accused.
* Because even if the people bringing the rape charges are CIA agents, only doing it for the publicity, or just seeking to get "revenge" (revenge for what, precisely?) they still deserve a fair hearing in court, rather than a public inquisition via internet.
* Because I want to make it clear that I think rape isn't okay.
* Because it's the right thing to do.
* Because even if it isn't the best tactic in the world to get Mike Moore to reply, it's something we can do to make a point not only to Mike Moore, but also to all the other guys out there who don't understand about rape culture and what rape apologism consists of.

Oh, and for those following it, here's a few apologists and outright trolls I've spotted on the tag:

@GoldenScepter
@aubsclark
@BRKeogh

I'll add more as I notice them. But don't feed 'em, folks.

I love Centrelink. Really, I do.

But sometimes, they make it extremely, agonisingly difficult to so much as like them. Like today, where I've received a lovely little note from them saying my unemployment benefit had been suspended pending enquiries regarding my eligibility. This effectively means I have no money coming in.

Now, I am well aware that the whole business revolves around the issue of which section of Centrelink's budget the money they will (hopefully) be paying me once again will be coming out of (I'm hopefully moving from Newstart - aka "the dole" - to Austudy). But a single-sentence letter saying my payment has been suspended, when I'm on the low end of a pay fortnight, and I am literally down to my last week's rent (I have $300 in my bank account - this will cover the cost of my share of the rent for next fortnight; after that I don't have any money at all) DOES NOT HELP THINGS at this end of the equation. Now I'm in a real tizzy about whether or not I'm actually going to be paid any money at all for the next fortnight, and what the hell I'm going to do if I'm not paid anything and what the hell I'm supposed to do to obtain the next instalment of the rent.

Okay, maybe I'm over-reacting, but the absolute terror that comes from realising I have no money and I have no way of getting any in a world which is very much geared toward needing money from people in order to acknowledge their very existence is very hard to overstate. Particularly since one of the number one nightmares I have, the really deep, existential fear which drives my very being, is a fear of vanishing completely from people's notice - slipping through the cracks in reality, perhaps.

I'm stressed, and I'll admit it. If I don't wind up getting onto Austudy; if I have to re-apply for Newstart, or worse still if my eligibility for either of those benefits is cut off and I'm regarded as being ineligible for both of them (for whatever reason) then I am genuinely without resources. The global financial crisis may not have hit Australia very hard, but it's hit our particular household hard enough that we are teetering constantly on the verge of bankruptcy, and we literally have no financial resources available to us. It's a stress I don't need, coming on top of a bundle of other stresses I didn't want.

[I'm having to write this in fits and starts, because if I stop and think about things too much, I'll wind up flooding my keyboard with tears, and at this stage I can't afford a new one.]

So for the rest of the day I'm going to sit tight, and try not to think too hard about any of this. I may have to sublimate a lot of the anxiety in a frenzy of washing dishes and cleaning the house, or gaming, or find some way of doing something to take my mind off things. Tomorrow I have my orientation day at uni, and I'm going to be absent from about 8 in the morning until I finally stumble home at about 10 past 5 in the evening. Hopefully by then I'll have received a nice letter telling me whether or not I'm getting Austudy. If not, I have a meeting with the nice man from CRS on Friday (to which I am going to have to scoot directly from the second uni orientation day, missing the social activities side of things... damnit) where I'll be able to get him onto the whole mess. After all, HE was the one who recommended I go back to uni. He can damn well earn his fucking keep.

Now, if you'll all excuse me, I'm going to pour myself a cup of tea, and try to convince myself that this will all work out in the end.

I've decided to get back into MMOs again, because I'm just that insane. I've decided to pick up one I used to play about three or four years back - Dark Age of Camelot. so, off I go to their website, and create myself an account. Then I start by downloading their installer, which is about 14MB in size.

One of the golden rules of MMOs I should know by now: the installer only installs the launcher. Once the launcher gets going, it starts installing everything else. So, since about 11am Wednesday, I've been downloading "patch" files (aka the full damn game client for DAOC). The download caused the graphics driver on my lapdog to crash about three times on Wednesday alone (my suspicion is the whole thing did the standard Windows "juggle more and more and more and more in Virtual Memory until you have to drop something" dance... and the bit which acted as the running chainsaw in the whole business was the graphics driver). First three times, it didn't get above about 12% complete. At present, it's at 85% complete, and I'm hoping this means I'll be able to get the silly thing finished overnight and maybe start up a character for the 7 day "free" trial tomorrow sometime.

Yes, it's a slow download. I suspect it's being throttled at least once along the line, if not more times. Yays.

I must be more insane than usual.

Of course, I'm also planning to head back to study this year, on the advice of my nice case manager from CRS. He's clearly decided the easiest way to get me off his case load is to shuffle me sideways into someone else's "too hard" basket, and given I'm intelligent, articulate, and clearly capable of stringing a sentence together without needing to stop and check a dictionary in the middle of things, the universities are probably the best people to deal with me. So of course I looked into university enrollment, and the first thing everyone gets pointed to here in Western Australia is the Tertiary Institutions Service Centre (TISC) who handle all the enrollment details for everyone who'd just bounced out of high school and into the tertiary education minefield. Problem is, TISC is set up to deal with high school students, rather than anyone returning to study (understandable; this is who they're going to see more of, after all). But this means they're asking questions about a person's high school education and wanting your high school results before they'll let you mention any other tertiary level study you might have undertaken. My high school records are somewhere in the filing cabinet (I think) and I can't get much more precise than that without essentially combing through about fifteen to twenty years worth of accumulated, salvaged, shuffled and re-shuffled paperwork which has been through at least five moves (two of them across the width of the continent). I've managed to find most of my other educational records (uni, TAFE, TAFE, uni) but without the high school records, I can't let TISC know about them.

It's rather like losing a chance at a job because you can't prove you've done high school English, even though you have a PhD in Literature.

What do I want to study? Well, having previously studied Politics, Education, and Professional Writing at BA level, and having done half a diploma in IT (user support), I'm thinking of heading back to pick up a BSc in IT (possibly with a double major in Games design/programming thrown in). Yes, I am a masochist, however did you guess?

Murdoch warns Google: it's time to pay

News Corporation Chairman Rupert Murdoch has launched a stinging attack on Google and other on-line entities for stealing content.

At a conference of World Media Executives at Beijing's Great Hall of the People, Rupert Murdoch has taken aim at search engines like Google as internet parasites.

According to the News Corporation Chairman, the so-called "aggregators" on the internet steal content from tradition media organisations and, he says, the time has come for them to pay for it.

"If we do not take advantage of the current movement toward paid-for content, it will be the content creators - the people in this hall - who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs will triumph," he said.

Let's see - "the current movement toward paid-for content" is being generated mostly by News Corporation, which, if I recall correctly, is the corporate media entity largely owned by Mr Murdoch's family. News Corporation also controls large shares of the media markets in Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and several other countries, the most notorious branches of which are the Murdoch tabloid newspapers (such as the UK "Sun" and approximately half of the major metropolitan daily newspapers in Australia) and the Fox News cable channel in the United States (commonly nicknamed "Faux News", because of the lack of resemblance between life as reported by their so-called "journalists" and the consensus reality of the majority of human beings). Do I sense perhaps the petulant foot-stampings of an old man who is terrified the global media empire he's spent a lifetime building is being threatened by the content aggregators, who collect into one space not only the Murdoch empire's view of the world, but also all those other views as expressed by people who aren't part of the News Corporation conglomerate?

After all, if people can choose to see multiple pictures of the same event (or multiple views from many different sources) they might just start to realise things aren't the simple black-and-white over-simplifications of Mr Murdoch's beloved format. If people can pick and choose from dozens of news sources in a single page, they might start asking questions about some of the articles from News Limited. Questions like "why is this news?" (for example, why are we being constantly told in the Murdoch press about the private lives of soi-distant "celebrities"; why do we never hear about "causes" without a so-called famous face to attach to them; why are the bedroom games of the British royal family such an all-consuming matter etc) or "why is this such a scandal?" (Famous star comes out as gay; female celebrity gains or loses weight; celebrity couple divorces) or even "why aren't we hearing about X?" (media conglomeration; media gatekeeping; corporate censorship; corporate abuses of power; non-capitalist economic theory; challenges to right-wing prejudices; shall I continue?). The news aggregators offer a view of a bigger picture, rather than the small-minded, small-world images Mr Murdoch wants to keep selling us. They offer a picture of a complex world, one where people aren't just one thing or another, but might be both at the same time, or even something completely different.

The news aggregators threaten Mr Murdoch's livelihood, just by offering a diversity of links to a variety of stories. They take away his control over the shaping of opinion, and threaten his ability to offer up a world where everyone is just like him: white, wealthy, upper-middle class, educated, heterosexual, cisgender, Christian, Anglo-Celtic and male. What the news aggregators threaten isn't the rights of people to create content, but rather the assumed right of Mr Murdoch and his social equivalents to dictate how the world looks to the rest of us. They threaten Mr Murdoch's privilege - and how dare they do that?