MELBOURNE NOW: Recent B & W photos

Outside coffee shop in Camberwell. Friday 13th.

Steps, Federation Square 15 Sept 2013

Queen Victoria Market, 15 Sept 2013

On #70 tram traveling towards city.

Photograph taken from inside tram traveling down Swan Street, Richmond 15 Sept.

How will science shape the human?

I watched with interest How will science shape what it means to be human on ABC2 last night, with various panelists from the fields of psychology, ethics, technology, physics, medicine and business.  Paul Davies was the only person to use the term 'post-human' but grappled with the notion and this might be, because in my mind at least, it is only by freezing a point in time - like now, that we can label the moment of change as something definitive, whereas in fact the humanimal has and always will be a potential to be something other than, or different to its present state of being.  Peter Singer thought it would be more fruitful to ask questions other than what it is to be human and that we might consider instead how future science might develop strategies to make us more ethical & less aggressive. One can only presume that he meant using genetic tampering to rid us of undesirable genetic traits and diseases, but he did not discuss whether this might be an ethical endeavor. The panelists did agree that future developments to physically and mentally enhance the human, would most likely be accessed by those who could afford it, creating a divide. The suggestion that access to enhancing medicines or technology would be equitable was just outrageous, since millions of people world wide live in poverty and that $1,000 fee to have your own personal genome sequenced for designer drugs, stem cells or gene modification to cure your current or future disease, would be out of reach for many people in the western world. I couldn't help but think of the film GATTACA whilst watching these well paid academics speak of a future in which science and technology will change our current notion of what it means to be human. On the point of desirable or undesirable human qualities, Liesl Capper-Beilby who has been developing 'conversational agents' (a computer system designed to converse with a human) for older or less mobile individuals, noted that if the conversational agent, as companion, was too amiable (that is, not aggressive enough) then individuals were less like to see the 'machine' as human and therefore not likely to interact with it. It seems that rightly or wrongly what made us human may have been our aggressive streak, our ability to fight for what we wanted and instigate change. She spoke of a future scenario in which those who were housebound or confined to a wheelchair could deploy virtual avatars to complete some of their social and business duties. However, I'm wondering if we are already, as Paul Virilio has said,the equivalent of the equipped disabled, since we rely so heavily on the internet and our communications technologies. Almost gone are the days when we would write a letter and go down to the post office to post it, or look forward eagerly to receiving correspondence in our letter box. Luckily, I don't fall into that category for I still have friends who send little things in the mail. Nostalgia is definitely human and I suppose that as the years go on there will be more nostalgia for the past?

no news is good news

Right now the grand-sounding new Australian National Cultural Policy is sitting in some desk drawer in Canberra waiting to be announced, and that is not a bad thing. The last one I remember, the Keating Government's Creative Nation announcement, was a disaster for many small studios who were "incentivised" to produce material on CD-ROM at the very moment the internet came of age. They went to market with products nobody wanted and when the seed money ran out closed by the dozen, leaving behind broken dreams and tens of thousands of CD's nobody wanted to buy.

If the new Australian National Cultural Policy remains spectral it left a trace on the Victorian state budget, with millions earmarked for "major Victorian companies" to support innovation and leverage additional (but unannounced) Commonwealth Government support. There are rumours that a fund for artistic excellence will be established, to fund innovation in the performing arts. When I heard about it I asked Minister Crean's office if it would fund (for example) Stelarc's extra ear implant, and got a vague answer about "culturally significant institutions", so I guess not.

The Federal budget allocation for the arts is quite impressive. SBS will be saved with an injection of capital, provided it supports the National Indigenous Television Service, an initiative supported up to now by the Australian Film Television and Radio School and some dedicated individuals. Commercial TV broadcasters get a discount on their license fees, provided they keep producing local dramas. Fox studios gets millions to assist in the production of the new Wolverine movie. Allowing for inflation the Australia Council's budget has been cut, and Screen Australia's has been hacked. Film producers will have to find more development money from the private sector by 2016. All this without the benefit of a policy announcement.

When it does come the new Australian National Cultural Policy looks like maintaining the status-quo. Hey, isn't that the one thing artists are supposed to rebel against?

Thoughtcrime?

My son sent me a link to a recent article by John Pilger entitled You are all suspects now. What are you going to do about it? Pilger states that because Echelon exists and identifies words associated with terrorism that we may all be considered terrorists if we use any of these words in our electronic communication with others. This is such old news! I remember in the 70s provocatively using the word 'bomb' or 'explosion' in my telephone conversations, knowing full well that any intelligence system in place would have to be going on more than words to identify someone as a potential threat to the security of a country or people. We are NOT all suspects as Pilger suggests! Basically he uses emotive language to attack America, to defend the actions of Julian Assange and to criticize Julia Gillard -  again, old news.
But it's not any of the above which concerns me, it is his question What are you going to do about it? that fills my thoughts. He gives absolutely no clue as to what the ordinary, everyday person can do and if even they really want to 'do anything' about such surveillance systems, instigated to protect them against potential threat of those who wish to cause damage to person and property & who would, if allowed, destroy personal freedoms by disrupting our hard won, peaceful life. Fact is, that what Colonel Jessup (Jack Nicholson) says in A Few Good Men (Rob Reiner,1992) is true: 'We live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns'. I'm not saying that I like living in this kind of world, I'm just stating facts.
Newer weapons in the arsenal against our real or perceived enemies include surveillance systems. However,regardless of the thousands of CCTV, video surveillance systems, spy satellites and signals intelligence systems operating to monitor human communication and behavior, if you're not a terrorist and not planning to commit a crime then there's nothing for you to be concerned about. Sure, it might be a bit unnerving to think that a mechanical instrument can track your movements and take a photograph of that pimple on your nose from space, but other than that, this 'Big Brother 'world is not going to go away anytime soon and no amount of signing petitions on Face Book is going to make any difference!
I think the worry is that many of us have read 1984 (George Orwell) and we think, like Winston that we might be arrested and persecuted for 'facecrime': 
It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself--anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face...; was itself a punishable offense. (Book 1, Chapter 5).
I for one am glad that large shopping complexes have CCTV, which can help identify an individual who has unlawfully absconded after abducting a small child, or the security mirrors in place so that you know that you can go to an isolated toilet area and a least feel that you have a level of safety. But really, we cry about our lost freedoms, but we bought into the convenience of EFPOST, even though it records electronic information about our location when we made that financial transaction and would, if necessary, aid police officers if we suddenly went missing. We enjoy our email, social media sites, new technology, iPhones, GPS tracking devices, but cry out that our personal freedoms are being infringed upon! Give me a break!
Pilger writes his article amidst a background of person freedoms, when he knows full well that we already have limited personal freedom. We can't just do what we like, especially since our behavior impacts on the welfare of others.However, having said all this, if we ever get to a time, described in 1984 in which thoughtcrime is punishable, then I'll be careful to avoid surveillance and start wearing a mask!

A NOT NEW AESTHETIC

Thought I'd buy into, just briefly, this discussion on the notion of the new aesthetic, which is purported to address images created through the use of various technologies and saturated into social media and other sites on the Internet.  I'm not going to include the address of the blog or any of the other links to the conversations because I don't believe that there is such a thing at this present time as a new aesthetic, but agree to a certain extent with Steve Middleton's statement: Despite the dazzling array of new electronic media objects available, new media of itself is not avant-garde.  He further explains:
We did not so much abandon old culture as allowed its amputation. New culture was thought to signify how clever, how creative, we had become. Inevitably, inexorably, new culture became a prosthesis; for lack of the old. Now we are asked to engage in the onerous task of mourning the loss of the archive, something that formerly we thought we no longer needed. Calling new media new was a mistake of the kind identified by both Frege and Wittgenstien. We see that critical theory should have alerted us to that mistake, but as critical theory itself became subsumed by the hypertext our critical faculties seem lost in, and subsumed by, mechanical specifications of bodies and culture. It is clear now that conceptualizing media as new created a kind of corporate schizophrenia brought about by irrational imaginings of ourselves as being outside history. We betrayed our cultural heritage the moment we decided it was old, and now we feel abandoned by it. Critical theory is now itself in need of restoration and repair. Critical theory should abandon its technological entanglements and turn again to human experience as a guiding principle in the search for truth (Vital Signs: Creative Practice and New Media Now, RMIT University, 2005). However, having posted this slice from Steve's article I do believe that what may be new is that current technologies allows anyone, even those without an art sensibility or training to make what appears as 'art' and what I mean by this, is that art deemed so simply by virtue of the fact that it was created through a particular technology is not dissimilar to images that can easily be made by any member of the public using the same technology. For example, Instagram software confines photos to a square shape, similar to Kodak Instamatic and Polaroid images, in contrast to the 4:3 aspect ratio typically used by mobile device cameras and with its numerous filters users may construct what appears as a new aesthetic, but in fact relies heavily on an older one.
Perhaps after all the question is not whether there is a new aesthetic, but a new kind of artist, since as someone said (or was it many) - anyone can be an artist or musician using new technologies, that is, of course if they have access to high end computers, application programs, Internet access and other equipment & resources necessary for them to explore their ideas. No longer the artist as genius, but the elite artist of technologies. You may produce a video or artwork that has a million hits on YouTube - it used to be that everyone had 15 minutes of fame, now you can be famous for a few minutes, for as YouTube says: 'broadcast yourself', but that doesn't equal creativity, it just means that for that particular moment in time you were noticed; a few minutes later the flock that circles you will move on screeching and crying for something else that's NEW.

BREIVIK - some thoughts

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2130364/Anders-Behring-Breivik-trial-Norwegian-killer-breaks-Vlad-Impaler-video-played.html

The Getty image above is not of an avatar in a life-like video game, or of a police officer armed and ready to shoot down criminals (or even those not guilty of anything), nor is it of a soldier involved in the killing of innocent Muslim civilians in Afghanistan. It is CCTV image of Anders Breivik, dressed in a police uniform shortly after a bomb he made killed 8 people in Oslo. He later shot dead 69 innocent people on Utoya island on 22 July, 2011 because he was afraid that Muslims were taking over Norway. This battle against Islam and right-wing extremism will be played out on the Internet and in other forms of media during Breivik's trial, which is expected to last ten weeks, but haven't we seen it all before? The terror of the 'war on terror' of the Reagan Administration in 1984, followed by President George W. Bush in 2001 and the endless, endless death of innocents by anonymous uniformed fighters? I ask myself why I was shocked last year when I heard this news item. Was it because Norway is so peaceful or is it because we are quite used to seeing news items about deaths in war, but are unused to seeing one individual kill so many of his own people? Having said that we Australians remember all too well militant young men with guns, Julian Knight, who maimed 19 people and killed 7 people during his shooting spree in Hoddle Street, Clifton Hill in 1987 as well as Frank Vitkovic, who killed 8 and wounded 5 people with his sawn-off shotgun in Queen Street, Melbourne in the same year. Martin Bryant who killed 35 people and wounded 21 people with a semi-automatic rifle at Port Arthur, Tasmania in 1996 and  Huan Yun "Allen" Xiang, who, loaded with five handguns killed two people and wounded five others at Monash University. I must admit that I get confused between watching footage of actual warfare, footage of police officers both in Australia and overseas who over-use weapons (guns and taser stun-guns) to kill, rather than apprehend the perpetrator and lone killers stalking their prey. All virtual entities, rather like the young children and adults, hunted and killed in front of a vast television audience in The Hunger Games (Gary Ross, 2012) or the real-time footage used in Coriolanus (Ralph Fiennes, 2011) and that's why we have to remember that the people who are killed are real; not just statistics.

Riddles, mysteries, enigmas

I was living in a share house in suburban Melbourne more than thirty years ago when the brother of one of my housemates was shot through the leg by police.

There had been a burglary, a chase on foot through dark suburban streets and a deserted railway yard. Shots were fired, my housemates brother fell, and I recall a first thought that it was literally a shot in the dark that he was lucky to survive.

I knew the victim only slightly but remember the sudden, immense, shock and pain felt by his sister, and shared amongst us all, in the moments after the news came. And the struggle to make sense of the event, to bring reason to the aftermath of an inherently unreasonable situation.

The inquest into the death of knife-wielding fifteen year old Tyler Jordan Cassidy in Northcote on December 11 2008 during a confrontation with four police officers recounted the shock and bewilderment felt by many in the broader community after that dreadful event. During the inquest various rational explanations were offered, including a suicide by police hypothesis. That was discounted by the coroner, who found that the unfortunate teenager was probably incapable of forming the necessary intent to die at the hands of police. "He was so overwhelmed by his emotions that it is not appropriate to conclude he was acting voluntarily", Judge Jennifer Coate found.

Judge Coate also exonerated the police involved in the shooting, but clearly they have been profoundly affected by the unfortunate teenager's death. "One day my daughters are going to ask me if I ever used a gun, and I don't know how I'm going to answer them", one anguished officer told the inquest.

Judge Coate said "(Tyler) was desperate that night...perhaps seeking some distraction from the inner despair he was in for reasons, sadly, we can now never know."

We try to make some sense of that terrible night, but never can. Not really. All we can do is endure, somehow, try to transcend the shock and pain and be human, which means sometimes life offers mysteries, riddles and enigmas we can never quite solve, no matter how great the desire to.

a post industrial post

captain of industry

joy for ever

...Its lovliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing...

John Keats (Enymion,1818)

Nietzsche, the Cardinal, and a leap of faith

It was interesting to read a Thomist argument in a daily paper this week. The Australian published an address to the Global Warming Policy Foundation by leading Australian Catholic, Cardinal George Pell. Cardinal Pell invoked the spirit of Thomas Aquinas in a vigorous prosecution of the case against global warming. I don't care one way or another about the polemic but I'm always intrigued by Thomism. The speech is here (pdf)

Thomas Aquinas was a thirteenth century friar whose life's work was the partial reconciliation of fragments of Platonic and Aristolian thought. In the (somewhat unkind) words of contemporaries, Aquinas and his followers laboured mightily to reconcile in death those who never agreed in life. Drawing from Platonic and Socratic traditions, Thomist philosophy in part underpins modern, secular ideas about universal freedoms and rights. Following Aristotle, Thomist doctrine asserts the necessity for accurate observation that underpins the scientific method.

Thomism teaches that a thing is not necessarily so just because a majority says it is. It is up to individuals to see for themselves, and to work out what is true and what is not. And Thomism teaches that not everything is knowable. Where things are not knowable through observation, Thomism teaches an intellect is sustained by faith, because faith does not end in a true or false proposition, but rather in a reality beyond knowing.

Thomism offers a model of mind as a continuum of knowing and believing, a model rejected by both modern positivism and its postmodern adversary, post structuralism. The modern positivist model of mind is a discontinuum of knowledge and ignorance in which believing depends upon knowing, and ignorance is a kind of poverty of mind, to be pitied and where possible cured. The postmodern, post structuralist position abolishes both objectivity and belief, substituting a continuum of subjective uncertainty, a phenomenological shell game of deceived and deceiving minds. Thomist thought is a handy antidote to both.

I don't care one way or another about the dispute over weather forecasts that preoccupied the Cardinal . The intrigue in the Thomist world view is, for me, the model of the individual human mind as a continuum of knowledge and belief. Classical skepticism, after Pyrrho of Elis (c360-270BCE) tried to develop methods of continually testing knowledge and belief. Old school skeptics were comfortable with what they comprehended as the limits of their knowledge, although those boundaries continuously changed, and promoted methods of suspending, rather than passing, judgement. An age later, Descartes introduced the idea of absolute certainty only after declaring he believed that God would not allow his eyes to be deceived, a leap of faith any Thomist might have taken.

The model of human mind as a continuum of knowing and believing is evident in the self-belief of Nietchze's ubermensch, in Thomist metaphysics, in the origins of the scientific method itself. There is always some tension between knowledge and belief. I believe in freedom. I believe in free speech. I can't objectively prove those exist, somewhere, as universal archetypes. But neither could Plato. Or Descartes, for whom the leap of faith - that God would not give him eyes only to cruelly deceive them - preceded rather than followed any evidential trail.

In Thomism I can see an answer to Nietzsche's call to grow long legs, to see further and to leap from peak to peak. Before I know anything else I need faith in at least myself. Faith I can survive the ordeal, belief I won't fall into the chasm between what is spoken and what is done.

Putting the mob in its place

The brutal suppression of a peaceful protest in Melbourne City Square on October 21 by riot police using attack dogs and chemical weapons signifies a changing relationship between government and governed.

A State government clinging to power by a single vote would not normally set attack dogs upon voters. But these do not seem to be normal times.

This month Australian business heavyweight Don Argus declared war on Australian shareholders unhappy with the average five million dollar paycheck for Australian corporate executives running top 100 companies.

The corporate gravy train is threatened by laws which give Australian shareholders the right to protest against excessive corporate pay packets. Shareholders can move to reject company directors salaries at annual general meetings. But according to Mr. Argus they should not.

Shareholders unhappy with executive remuneration could, he said, sell their shares. And Australians are selling their shares, driving equity markets to historical lows, while executive pay packets soar to new heights.

The town or city square is historically a place for ordinary people to meet and to sometimes protest. Melbourne's city square is an uninviting place surrounded by businesses paying exorbitant rent to trade in a people's place. It is difficult to think of any public space in Melbourne which has not been encroached upon by commercial interests, but our city square represents, after years of mismanagement by Melbourne City Council, the biggest example of an overly commercialized public space in Melbourne.

Don Argus and Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle have turned upon the Australian public who own what they, temporarily and at great expense, control, and there is very little ordinary Australians can do about it. Except vote them out at the next opportunity.

The strange rules of Australian corporate governance guarantee that a single vote against exorbitant executive remuneration is not enough. Shareholders have to vote against corporate remuneration policies at two annual general meetings in a row, to force a change. Company directors only need to vote once to increase their pay. Strange times.

Another strangeness about these times is that freedom has become divisible, with Melbourne's Lord Mayor suddenly acquiring the right to declare a time limit on free speech. This limit exists only in the Lord Mayors mind, and that of the Federal and State political class who endorsed his actions.

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights says:

All human rights are indivisible, whether they are civil and political rights, such as the right to life, equality before the law and freedom of expression; economic, social and cultural rights, such as the rights to work, social security and education , or collective rights, such as the rights to development and self-determination, are indivisible, interrelated and interdependent. The improvement of one right facilitates advancement of the others. Likewise, the deprivation of one right adversely affects the others.

The rights of corporations to profit seem to outweigh the rights of citizens to ask questions, to discuss, to assemble, and to protest, at least two to one. It is by any reasonable standard a situation which is probably not fair. It is certainly an indication that individuals have less social gravity in modern affairs than corporations. And that will be welcomed by the political classes, always on the lookout for ways to profit, and cling to power, and to demonize and brutalize what they have called "sheep" and a "mob" opposing them.

First Casualties

Occupy Melbourne protesters October 21: We are the 99 per cent.

indymedia.org.au October 21: There is a big lie being perpetrated on the Australian people.

Police Assistant Commissioner Fontana October 21: We have concerns that state wards are hanging around.

Melbourne Mayor Robert Doyle October 21:

Traders are suffering and events planned for the square have been disrupted.

Occupy Melbourne spokesperson Nick Carson October 21: People will be arrested.

Police Assistant Commissioner Fontana October 21: They are consuming alcohol and we are concerned that will lead to violence.

Erin Buckley Occupy Melbourne legal support team

October 21: Our observers have witnessed and been told of numerous incidents of excessive force and violence against the peaceful protesters...

Melbourne Age website October 21: Hundreds of people, including school children, are now lining Swanston and Collins streets watching the drama, with some chanting "the whole world is watching".

Unnamed policeman, to Melbourne Herald Sun October 21: Now they know we mean it. No more Christine Nixon stuff.

Melbourne Mayor Robert Doyle October 22: A mindless shriek of protest.

Melbourne Herald Sun October 22: victory for the boys in blue was never in doubt.

The Australian Editorial October 22: There is no meter running on freedom of expression. The internet and social media have their place, but, historically, the town square is in part a space for public expression.

Occupy Melbourne protesters October 22: Occupy Melbourne is part of a worldwide movement against the growing disparity between rich and poor, austerity measures and corporate greed. It is a movement for economic and social justice and real democracy. The richest 20% of households in Australia have 60 times the wealth of the poorest 20% of Australians. CEOs are getting huge pay increases and banks are posting record profits. We want a fair share for all Australians. The camp where Occupy Melbourne has been for the past week has been dispersed, but the movement against inequality will continue tomorrow.

Melbourne Age Editorial October 23: Really Lord Mayor?...Peaceful gatherings of this kind shouldn't be broken up in such a heavy handed manner.

Occupy Melbourne protesters October 23: We are the 99 per cent.

#occupy melbourne

99% suppressed, Friday October 21 2011

Barbarians at the gate

So it is true, there are no girls on the internet!

Internet activists The Pirate Party won 15 out of 130 seats in elections for German State Parliament yesterday, with 8.9% of the popular vote. But all fifteen are male.*

“Gender politics has not arrived for the Pirates yet, and that is not a step forward but a step backward,” Berlin Mayor and Social Democrat Party heavyweight Klaus Wowereit told German media.

The Pirate Party are anti censorship, pro file-sharing, and support transparent government by Wikileak.

The rise of the German Pirate Party represents a much larger threat to media and entertainment conglomerates than the Green-sponsored Finklestien inquiry into Australian political comment does.

The Pirate Party opposes privately owned monopolies, especially in media markets, and supports strengthened privacy statutes and civil protections. Media monopolies and the governments they influence are characterised as enemies of the people. Ordinary people are everywhere oppressed, they say, by invasions of privacy by media conglomerates with excessive influence on the State, and by the criminalisation of legitimate private activities like, for example, file sharing over a peer to peer network, by governments urged on by the same multinational media conglomerates that install them to office.

The New Zealand Government has recently legislated to restrict internet access to individuals caught file sharing by private investigators working for media corporations. Internet traffic through New Zealand dropped ten percent when the new laws took effect.

The Pirate Party wants to abolish international copyright protection for media corporations, especially those it labels monopolistic. The Australian Pirate Party is pro hactivism and anti internet regulation. It champions unhindered access to the internet, and by implication unfettered bit torrent downloads of copyright media, as a fundamental human right.

Australia has been spared, so far, the public spectacle of teenagers and broke and unemployed mums hauled into court and ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars compensation to mega corporations for sharing popular music tracks on torrent trackers. But Australian Julian Assange and his wikileaks website is at the centre of international debate over corporate and State transparency issues.

Any political party strong enough to flex its muscles will, and short of a collapse in the Australian Green Party's vote we can expect the Greens to muscle up to what it thinks are their opponents more. But the emergence of organised opposition to communications monopolies in the European Green's own back yard illustrates how out of mainstream, and out of touch with grassroots sentiment, the Greens have moved since their early parliamentary successes in Europe and Australia.

I remember the late media boss Kerry Packer shaping up to a Parliamentary inquiry in the early 1990s, telling astonished parliamentarians "I don't think you have any power to regulate me". The Australian Greens might disagree, but the up and coming Pirate Party may be much more in touch with the preoccupations of mainstream internet users, and media consumers in general, and much more likely to take on media bosses about issues people actually care about.

* I was wrong - Susan Graf, a 19 year old member of Berlin's Chaos Computer Club, was elected as a Pirate Party member of Germany's Berlin State Parliament last week, along with 14 male colleagues.

Film review - Predators

Predators (Twentieth Century Fox, 2010) is the latest in the film franchise featuring an eponymous heat-seeking alien race which hunts other alien life forms, including humans, for sport. The hunt has moved from a Guatemalan rain forest in Predator (1987) to decaying urban jungles in Predator 2 (1990), to a monster face-off with creatures from the Alien films under polar ice in Alien vs Predator (2004), and small town America in Alien vs Predator: Requiem.

Nimrod Antal's 2010 Predators emphatically cuts ties with the Alien v Predator films, comics, and (banned in Australia) video games, in a white knuckle opening sequence with Royce (Adrian Brody) falling helplessly from the sky into an alien rain forest. Royce is joined by a posse of six other men and a woman, all plucked in a white light from battlefields, condemned cells and other charnel houses around the Earth. We are dead, one remarks, and this is hell.

The characters are reborn but remain all too human. Betrayal stalks them as relentlessly as the expanded gallery of predatory aliens the film introduces. The humans must make uneasy alliances amongst themselves to survive, with unexpected consequences. They look for allies also amongst their alien foes. Help me, one human begs a Predator, I'm one of you.

I guess we are not the only things being hunted, another observes of distant inhuman cries.

The 1987 John McTiernan film Predator asked who are the real predators? Adrian Brody's Royce provides a ferociously physical answer as he outwits both human and alien to save the day, or at least the girl. Alice Braga's Isobel provides the film a wavering moral compass, a character ultimately paralysed by good works and unable to save herself. An amoral Royce, eventually stripped of all civilization, saves her instead, defeating the last surviving high tech alien with rat cunning and fire.

The Predator films resonate with themes developed by the ecology, deep ecology and survivalist movements looking to reconfigure the place of humanity in the universe. Human and not human compete for survival, and outcomes are far from certain for any. Humans must learn from an unfamiliar ecosystem the rules of an inhuman game. Survival depends upon abandoning civilisation, and its mores, to become a component part of an unremittingly hostile ecosystem. The only issue of importance is survival, at any cost. Civilisation, and socialisation beyond survival, are superfluous, excess, waste. As one character remarks, during a moment where civilisation is temporarily restored, what a shit hole!

Predators constantly offers its characters moral dilemmas. In one scene a member of the party yells for help.

Wound one man make him suffer make him bleed make him call out for help and set a trap. And kill those who come. I have done this, another character offers.

The green blooded alien predators seem to have a red-blooded moral code also, offering mercy to a human in one scene, and enacting some elaborately stylized Katana swordplay in another. Humanitarian gestures of all kinds are constantly challenged as inappropriate, often leading to disaster and death for those inclined to be helpful to others. Civilisation, modernity, and its technologies, are portrayed as ultimately toxic to humans and alien predators alike. An alien that assists the humans earns a grisly end. Another human becomes more alien than the Predators. As American Marxist ecologist Murray Bookchin observed the same year that the original Predator was released, the green viewpoint had become a singularly dismal prism.

Survivalisms and green philosophies notwithstanding, Predators is a good action film, with an outstanding cast, and a script that more than expands upon the original, introducing new aliens with new technologies that are eventually utterly defeated in an old fashioned knock down fight with humans.

I watched Predators on Foxtel satellite television in wide screen standard definition.

winter of discontent made glorious spring

I was sorry to read radio MTR is in a bit of trouble, with its audience sinking to around a two percent share. Melbourne Talk Radio is the new kid on the radio block in Melbourne, established less than two years ago.

I don't listen to it regularly, talk radio is a little strident for me in the mornings and MTR's afternoon schedule was Sydney-centric, the last time I did. I hope MTR's format continues under new ownership because it provides an Australian voice that might otherwise go unheard.

Australian media audiences have been fragmenting for at least two decades. New entrants to a broadcast media market find themselves on a playing field that is anything but level. The broadcasters with the most channels will do best because they can deliver a diverse range of programming simultaneously. New Digital television multi-channels are revitalizing a television industry that commentators were writing off a decade ago.

Two percent is about the audience share of so-called for-and-by programming - MTR"s morning schedule is described as in your face conservative by conservative commentators - in all the Australian capital cities. The only way a single channel can make inroads into a new market is by capturing pent up demand for the type of programming it offers at the expense of other more established broadcasters' audiences.

Modern media markets offer more media, more choice, more competition for smaller audiences and more programming tailored for those smaller audiences. Smaller per schedule audiences mean smaller revenues per schedule, and perhaps MTR's failure to capture a larger market share reflects those market realities. Politics is not a favourite of Australian audiences, and media organizations must look to subsidizing news and political comment from revenues derived from other programming with greater audience appeal.

It has been a big couple of weeks for the Australian mass media. The media convergence review is finally underway, with the Australian Press Council kindly stepping up to offer to regulate blogs, and the Australian Communications and Media authority basically recommending it had failed its mission to regulate Australian broadcasters and should therefore be wound up in favour of another body with greater regulatory powers over a larger proportion of Australian media.

A relentless campaign against News Limited and its founder Rupert Murdoch continued with a ferocious attack on the Australian newspaper by Robert Manne In the latest edition of the Quarterly. I would review the essay but it cost ten bucks and an hour and a half of my time to read that I'll never get back, a price I wouldn't wish upon anyone else.

I wrote about broadcaster Alan Jones' attack on working journalists at an anti-government protest rally in Canberra a couple of weeks ago. Following up as best I could I found out that Mr Jones' friends had been delayed at the NSW/ACT border for about three minutes while they sought directions from police. The kindest comment was "Mr Jones appeared at the rally as a private citizen". Everyone else seemed rather exasperated with the eponymous broadcaster. "It was misinformation", one protest organizer offered.

Three journalists were sacked, and one resigned, from the Nine television network's Brisbane newsroom over the so-called choppergate affair. "We rightly demand accountability and high standards of others and we must meet those expectations ourselves", Nine general manager Jeffrey Brown said, adding that the newsroom had failed to meet its own standards.

Spring in Melbourne is as always a wonderful assault upon the senses. Bright sun like honey dripping from pink and white and orange-yellow blossoms, everywhere the scent of Jasmine and budding fig, olive, cherry and pear. Spring brings a promise of renewed hope, and this year's spring seems especially abundant after years of watching gardens parched by unremitting drought struggle to survive. No matter what size a plasma screen is, or how high fidelity, the media's dim glow can't compete at all with the bright promise of abundance and growth finding its way through the heaviest curtains and warming the most shadowed corners.

argument Ad Nauseum

I read Robert Manne's criticisms of The Australian newspaper in The Age newspaper.

Some of the criticism is Ad Hominem, playing the man and not the ball:

...it is doubtful The Australian could survive without hidden financial subsidy from the global empire of its founding father, Rupert Murdoch...

and I really don't follow it. Some of the criticism is laughable

...citizens have a plethora of accessible sources of information on the internet...

but the big issue seems to be

The Australian has conducted a prolonged and intellectually incoherent campaign against action on climate change and undermined the hold in public life of the central values of the Enlightenment, Science and Reason.

and

The Australian not only waged a war on science but also threatened the always vulnerable place of reason in public life.

Robert Manne goes on to argue, if I may paraphrase, that only statements which are true are permissible, suggesting that what is true or not should be established by consensus.

Democracy relies on an understanding of the difference between those questions that involve the judgment of citizens and those where citizens have no alternative but to place their trust in those with expertise.

An Argumentum ad Verecundiam, or appeal to authority, or a consensus of authorities, is of course an adventure in rhetoric in the ancient styles of academic disputation and not even close to the overwhelmingly skeptical central values of the Enlightenment. And Robert Manne deploys as well the Argumentum ad Baculum beloved of early Renaissance polemicists like Savonarola in Quattrocento Florence.

In the discussion of climate change, the future of the Earth and of humanity are at stake.

Only the argument that the only permissible statements are true ones is connected with the Enlightenment and that belongs to the now discredited philosophy of Logical Positivism, which had as a central proposition only statements which are true are permissible. A proposition accepted by consensus that turned out impossible to logically prove.

Still typing with one hand so I'll keep it brief. In the discussion of climate change, the future of free speech is at stake. The worst aspect of the awful dispute over weather forecasts we call the climate change debate is the repeated attempts by both sides of the so called debate to try to silence the other. Bah. Humbug. And a pox on all your houses.

everywhere in chains

A couple of events this week tested a lifelong commitment to the ideals of free speech. I don't mean the patchwork of principles, common law and case law that privilege some speech as free in Australia. I mean a commitment to a right to freedom of speech without reservation as an overarching principle in Australian life similar to that the United States of America enjoys in its constitution. An ideal that would prevent the Commonwealth, States and their officials acting in ways which impede the free expression of ideas by citizens.

Freedom without responsibility is a hollow affair. If we could only stop debating the extent to which the expression of ideas may be legitimately regulated, and begin instead a dialogue about personal responsibility and the practical limits of freedom of speech, the standard of public debate in Australia might rise like the well baked cake it ought to be. What we have now is a half baked system of privilege, for a privileged few, that seems open to abuse at every turn.

Last weekend an exhibition of photographs by Czech artist Jan Saudek began at the Ballarat Art Gallery without its centrepiece work. A photograph of a semi naked girl and her mother was removed from exhibition after representations by Ballarat Council and Tourism Victoria that the work illustrated or encouraged child prostitution. The Director of the Ballarat International Foto Bienale, Jeff Moorfoot, told The Age newspaper he was warned not to display the photograph because "if this goes to ministerial level chances are we won't fund the next festival" (link contains semi-nudity)

The photograph was published in yesterday's Age newspaper. I have to say I'm repelled by it. It is not the kind of work I would seek out in a gallery. It is a photograph I would avert my eyes from if I stumbled upon it. I feel the strong belief I hold in the ideals of free speech strained like an elastic band wrapped too tightly around a big box and stretched to almost breaking. I felt the same when Andres Cerrano exhibited his Piss Christ in Melbourne.

These are visceral responses to extremely strong images, to a feeling of total wrongness that threatens to, and truthfully sometimes does, overwhelm reason. Over the years I had to occasionally cope with similar feelings about scripts I shot. I have come to understand that a commitment to the ideal of free speech is not without consequences, or any guarantee of freedom from doubt.

The second event which stretched a lifelong commitment to the ideals of free speech to almost breaking was the convoy of no confidence that showed up in Canberra outside Parliament House on Monday to call for a double dissolution election. Inside Parliament the leader of Government business labelled the protest a convoy of no consequence. I would have thought that a single Australian turning up at Parliament House with a beef of some kind is of consequence to the people inside. But that's not what I found disturbing.

Outside Parliament House Broadcaster Alan Jones, who just a few weeks ago I was sticking up for on these pages, alleged his protest was being suppressed. Federal Police, Mr Jones alleged, had been instructed by unnamed others to stop protesters at the NSW/ACT border, and his audience had therefore been significantly diminished by what he described as a conspiracy. Additionally, journalists reporting the event were singled out and some claim bullied, one from Sky News for reporting his observations that the police had not prevented Mr Jones audience attending the protest, and another from the Sydney Morning Herald for asking Mr Jones if he was receiving a fee for his role as master of ceremonies, a question Mr Jones has often asked scientists talking about climate change on his radio program. She was labelled a grub and a disgrace, told she had no right to be there.

I could barely believe my eyes and ears. Mr Jones is a passionate broadcaster, often storied as an honorable man, who sometimes apologizes for the strong rhetoric he customarily uses. His speech is probably protected by the Australian High Court's insistence that utterances about matters connected with free and fair elections must not be interfered with.

Nor should the rights of anyone to ask, report, and be in public places, even to protest in public places, within the law, be interfered with.

The allegations of conspiracy Mr Jones raised must now be carefully investigated to clear the air, in my opinion, because if true our great nation, with its careful separation of executive and operational powers, is seriously broken. A parliamentary inquiry may be in order to restore public confidence in the Federal Police, and I understand the Speaker of the House of Representatives is making some initial inquiries into police operations that day. That is an entirely appropriate response to these extremely serious allegations of official interference in the democratic process. Mr Jones is also entitled to, and absolutely should, allow the allegations of deliberate misreporting be investigated, where appropriate, by the Press Council and the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

Australians are entitled to conduct themselves without fear. Australians ought to be able to attend Parliament House without fear. Working Australians, police, journalists, are not above scrutiny, but ought not to be singled out and publicly berated, in the name of freedom of speech, for simply doing their job. “I found the whole experience extremely intimidating - having your name yelled out by Alan Jones in such a hostile way, to such a hostile crowd...was frightening”, one journalist said. We need them all, every one, to do their job for us without fear, to make our democracy strong.

And neither should Directors of Arts Festivals be privately bullied. The rule of law should be paramount in our society. There should be an independent inquiry into the suppression of Jan Saudek's photograph to establish why the rule of law was not applied in this case, the third I know of this year where our new State Government seems to have acted to suppress publications by throwing around their weight rather than through the weight of the law. One Sunday before Easter the Government appeared to threaten a Melbourne pub with closure over an event by Melbourne Goths that appeared blasphemous. A member of State Parliament is under investigation for misleading Parliament over a dispute about the distribution of political material at a city railway station. Now an arts festival Director appears to have been pressured (link contains semi-nudity) into withdrawing a controversial work that might have more properly been referred to the film and literature classification system for fair and independent evaluation on its merits, however dubious they appear to me.

I have been considering quite carefully a response to Julie's post about the riots in England last week. Most if not all commentary on those events point to a breakdown in the rule of law, and a lack of respect for authority, especially police authority. How can we expect young people to have confidence for or respect in either the rule of law, or the police that enforce the law, when one is neglected, and the other stands accused of a grievous conspiracy against the Australian people?

Freedom is a question, not an answer. "People are born free, but live everywhere in chains", wrote Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau also described the social contract: “legislative power belongs to the people, and can belong to it alone”, he wrote. Rousseau had some complicated ideas. In modern Australia the people’s house, the Parliament, is one place for sure where questions of all kinds, even unpleasant ones, demand answers rather than scorn. It also demands the people’s unfettered presence, however unpalatable that might be to a government of the day. An art gallery is also a place to ask questions, however unpalatable I personally find them. I would challenge anyone concerned about child abuse, myself included, to walk instead the difficult path of supporting the establishment of a comprehensive, perhaps continuing, Royal Commission on the abuse of children in care, and to support legislation compelling the churches, orphanages and child welfare organizations involved in child protection for the past fifty years to open their books for inspection. Those would provide more constructive routes to learn about and prevent child abuse than suppressing objects that remind us of the great responsibilities society has to its most vulnerable, and how badly we let them down.

Whatever the merits of these two singular but troubling events this week, each illustrate, in their own way, both the limits of freedom as we currently comprehend it and a glimpse of the issues that freedom raises for us but remain, for the present, unresolved. Until we might discover ways to live as free as we are born.

Dear Professor Patrick McGorry

Congratulations on your victory confirmed in the last Federal budget. Your reform campaign successfully wedged the government on mental health issues during a closely contested election, and you successfully pressed those reforms with a minority government to an outcome which favors organizations associated with you. Whether through beginners luck or carefully crafted political lobbying, you won. Well done.

But. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. You took around $350 from my family a year to do that. We don't know for sure how much because the reforms haven't cascaded through the health system yet. But it looks like $350 a year. At least.

I was surprised to read in this morning's Age newspaper your assertion that mentally ill Australians and their families have not spoken out against the reforms to mental health funding you obtained in the last Australian Federal budget. My family did not get an opportunity to express an opinion. You did all your maneuvering behind closed doors, and ambushed the sitting government with your proposals without notice. Or public consultation. Perhaps if you had run public forums to explain your position you might have been surprised by the many people using the services you had subsidies removed from. Or perhaps not. After all, the subsidies for psychological services you successfully campaigned against were labelled middle class welfare, after your reform campaign.

What can be labelled can be hated. The stigma attached to mental health issues almost guarantees many won't speak out publicly against your reforms. Don't you know that?

Like you, I once campaigned long and hard, backed by a big University, for reform in a particular sector of Australian endeavor. And saw my proposals accepted, implemented by legislation and put into practice. What a joy that is, to have a life's work affirmed in public policy. Unlike you, I saw the accusations of partisanship and special interest coming, and did not stay in the position I had before the reforms. So I don't know what it is like for you now to be accused of putting your own special interest above that of other Australians. It must be awful. And I don't believe for a moment you are.

But. There Aint No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. The TAANSTAFL principle applies to politics in spades, You can't be half a political virgin. There is a price for everything, even being right. Perhaps if you don't want to be accused of partisanship you might consider stepping down from the organizations you got funded. Most of us involved in special interest politics do, sooner or later. Better to go sooner then.

Or perhaps, like me, you consider you still have something to offer to Australian life. So I'll continue to struggle to pay my own way, without the benefit of either private insurance or government support, for my own mental health needs. As long as I can. As you will have to struggle on the best you can, amidst all this political fallout you didn't see coming. Politics is like a mental illness, you don't know how debilitating it can be until circumstances and symptoms overwhelm.

It is worth mentioning that when I was young I was told it was a pity there were no services for young people with mental health issues, and I was on my own. Now I am old I'm being told there are no services for older people with mental health issues, and I'm on my own.

A couple of hundred years ago I may have been happy seeing a priest rather than a psychologist. But that was before your scientific method gutted respect for the Churches, and the child abuse scandals that psychiatrists didn't recognize the symptoms of did the rest. Now I see very clearly a future that includes making my way to a government pharmacist to be prescribed my government medication. You know, the stuff with all the side effects that leave me passive, disinterested, uncaring, dehumanized.

We aren't bullies on this blog. So I'm not going to pose a whole lot of questions that makes me look clever, and you look bad. I'd just like to point out that you cost my family around $350 a year. And you didn't ask, you took.

I guess that sooner or later I'll be forced, by the policies and politics you favour, to make my way to a government pharmacist for some government medication. You know, the stuff that makes me feel like I'm in outer space. Until then, here's some opposition to your position to consider. From a usually silent and silenced bit of Australian society taking responsibility for themselves and their own mental health. And, thanks to you, with greatly reduced government assistance. You have disadvantaged me in terms of choice, cost, and outcome. And I'm not alone.

I'd rather see a psychologist than take your medications. But it looks like I won't have a choice, if you get your way. So with the greatest respect, and only because you say there is none, I offer my opposition in principle here to your political position, and to the outcomes which you seek to achieve, if only to begin a dialogue we must have, if mental health reforms are really for all.

smaller than they appear

I was not surprised to see someone announce to a book launch this morning that they had eavesdropped on an editorial meeting at a Melbourne newspaper and learned that the newspaper was out to get them.

Newspapers out to get people, by fair means or foul, has got Publisher Rupert Murdoch and his News Corporation media empire into the news lately.

Rupert Murdoch is one of my heroes. A crusading editor in the day and bold businessman who innovated markets long established media empires floundered in. If Rupert Murdoch had not campaigned so ardently for so lang for education reform in Australia I might not have one

Rupert Murdoch is a ferocious competitor, and so are his executives. Last August Australian News Limited CEO John Hartigan told he Future Forum of the Newspaper Publishers Association his newspapers are

...moving from setting the agenda every day to owning it all day, every day

Mr Hartigan was talking up his company's move to internet publishing, especially on pads, phones and other mobile platforms. But Jan Rezab, from CandyTech in Czech Republic, told the same forum that articles from The West Australian newspaper, part of Kerry Stokes media group, owned the agenda more. Nearly one million of its online articles a month were shared electronically on Facebook compared with a half million Facebook shares for the most shared News publication, the Herald Sun.

A couple of weeks ago the Australian reported

Two former Supreme Court judges will oversee an internal review of third-party payments at News Limited in Australia as the company addresses concerns raised by the News of the World phone hacking scandal in Britain.

Half of the respondents to the last weekly Essential Research online poll said the federal government should not allow one company to own the majority of Australia's major newspapers. Forty-eight per cent also supported the need for more media regulation, and fifty-one percent expressed rising concern about phone hacking after scandals in England revealed the now closed News of the World UK newspaper had published stories gained from hacking mobile telephone voicemails.

Mass media is, above all, mass entertainment. Newspapers commonly print what their readership want to hear. They are, after all, a business. Right now, newspapers are in the business of surviving the assault on their revenues by digital media. News Limited's grip on the Australian media, and the Australian political agenda, is perhaps not as tight as its opponents imagine, given that millions of Australian Facebook users, at least, show a preference for newspaper articles from News Corporation's competitors.

There will probably be a Parliamentary inquiry into the concentration of media ownership in Australia. There hasn't been one for a while, and the Australian Parliament is quite entitled to inquire into and possibly regulate companies doing business in Australia. But it won't change a thing.

Newspapers run stories, and people complain about them. They always have. Meanwhile, only ten percent of people believe what they read in the newspapers anyway. The most believable media by far, according to media academics, is broadcast media. Fourteen percent of people believe what they see or hear on radio and TV.

Hardly a ringing endorsement of either the press or its critics who accuse the media of unduly influencing public affairs.

It is a great shame we are stuck debating the extent to which media should be regulated, and not the limits of free speech.