This piece was contributed by Sandra Mundine.

John Howard’s nomination and subsequent rejection by the ICC has stirred up a whole lot of muck, and there seem to be two main streams of thought in Australia.

The first is “hahahahaha serves him right”.

The second is “regardless of whether you love or hate him, he is a solid cricket fan and his nomination should at least go to the vote”.

I’m going to state straight out that I’m of the latter category. I was no fan of the man, but does that mean that he should be barred from pursuing any other professional interests? A lesson I learnt by watching Project Runway (apart from how to “make it work”) was that even when you don’t like someone and think they’re a complete boofhead, you have to admit that sometimes they’re the best person for the job. This is one of those instances.

All of the above is just a quick summary of my view so that I can get to the real meat of this piece, which isn’t about John Howard and isn’t about Zimbabwe and isn’t about cricket, but is about the rampant paranoia and, dare I say it, racism seemingly sweeping the Indian media for the benefit of their own bottom line and to satisfy some urge to turn Australian into the villain.

Regardless of what you think of the attacks on Indian students, and regardless of whether you believe there is a strong underlying sentiment of racism in the white Australian population, hopefully you can still recognise the irony of the following statement:

“The Indian media says John Howard’s nomination for the ICC’s vice-presidency means racism is part of the Australian DNA”.

Need I say more? Not only is it the ridiculous idea that Howard wanting to be on the board of an international committee for CRICKET mean that Australia is racist (what?) but also stating that a particular personality trait is part of a particular racial group’s DNA is, in itself, a racist comment. How can I tell? Well here’s a little ‘racism test’ I like to apply:

1. Is the statement based around a particular adjective? (e.g. dirty, lazy, smart, dumb, smelly, criminal, small-penised)
2. Is the statement applied across an entire race or nationality, or does it imply that the trait is usual to that race or nationality?
3. If somebody said the same thing about your race or nationality, would you be offended or affronted?

Of course, not all statements can so easily be deduced according to the above. For example, telling someone to stop being “such a” whatever-their-race-is, or using a race as an insult implies that being that race is a negative thing and is therefore a racist affront. Saying that all American girls are sluts (as I was once told while overseas) beautifully combines both racism and sexism yet doesn’t use an adjective, but I’m sure you know when a noun is used as a negative adjective and this is a good example.

Here’s a quick lesson in international studies: Every country and every race has its jerks. Every country and every race has extremists. Every country and every race has people who think that country is for ‘them’ and their ‘type’. Every country and every race has people who want to minimise the rights of women and minority groups. Every country and every race has people who are just plain racist and proud of it. Here’s the kicker: Every country and every race has journos looking to sell their wares using extreme headlines, stereotypes, and gross exaggerations of (often unchecked) fact.

India and Australia are the same in this way. If Australian papers published something saying “being a slut is in the American DNA”, as my foreign acquaintances appeared to believe, then would you not expect the papers to be rounded on and criticised? We shouldn’t be scared to take them on and say “You know what, no we’re not all racist and we’re not all bigots, and we don’t appreciate being racially stereotyped by you or anyone else”. Criticising that kind of editorial approach isn’t us being racist, it’s us standing up for ourselves.

What we find is that the Indian media’s attack on both Howard and Australia as a whole has gone beyond bringing attention to an important issue in society at large. It has instead morphed into a blatant opportunity to sell papers using a racial stereotype with which the Indian people are now familiar and about which they are concerned. This doesn’t make India unique, it just makes it as messed up as the rest of the world, and just as deserving of a kick up the bum when journalistic standards fail.

This piece was contributed by Sandra Mundine.

This article is by Scott and was originally published at The Pigs Arms.

I had to begin with the Oz chant here because I only recently learned that Wikileaks is in large part run by an Australian, Julian Assange. Wikileaks is a “multi-jurisdictional public service designed to protect whistleblowers, journalists and activists who have sensitive materials to communicate to the public[1]” and is aimed at creating ‘good governance.’ Assange is by all accounts a difficult man to speak with, currently stating that he feels his life may be in danger due to Wikileaks’ involvement in some leaking of classified US military material.

Assange may be correct to worry on at least one account. One of his idols, Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of The Pentagon Papers, recently stated that the current US administration is by far the most effective at finding and silencing leakers of recent US governments. He also agreed that Assange might be under personal threat if he is located.

There are a number of important questions you could ask regarding Wikileaks. One might be: good governance according to who? Another might be: do the Wikileaks folk have their own dark agenda?

Most basically, will knowing the truth actually help?

Wikileaks takes the position that if all the dirty little secrets of the corporate and government world are known, then it will be more difficult for them to have things all their own way. Thus we find entries on the site such as ‘Scientology UK Annual Returns, 2008,’ ‘Secret recording of the LDS temple endowment ceremony, 2009,’ and ‘Boeing 737-200 maintenance manuals, August 2007.’ Some of the things on Wikileaks are items you might previously have found by searching the internet for websites or chat rooms dedicated to specific topics, others – like the Iraq footage – are not. The overall theory is, as I understand it, if the truth is known then lies lose their power to manipulate. So – good governance is equated with knowing the truth.

The idea of free information has been attractive to many over the years. I recall reading a novel by the Strugatski brothers, giants of Russian science fiction that they are, where information on the whereabouts of anyone on earth was freely available at all times. It seemed to me as a reader that freedom from secrecy might mean freedom from paranoia. Of course in that book, Beetle in the Anthill, there turned out to be ever-receding secret plots and paranoias, and no neat resolution at the end.

Closer to home, politics reveals that in many cases that facts do not help with governance. Currently we are seeing a revival of the debate about asylum seekers – and coincidentally or not, yesterday there arrived in my email a circular about ‘illegals,’ referring to refugees as ‘illegal’ border crossers. Interesting in a number of ways, but among them in the sense that it is well established – and no secret – that refugees are in no sense ‘illegal.’ This has been tested in Australia’s High Court, as well as being for a long time part of the internationally endorsed UN treaties.

So we know that refugees are not illegal. But this does not stop some from continually, and deliberately, mislabelling them as such. Also, it does not stop many countries around the world imprisoning refugees, at great expense to themselves and their constituents. It seems that access to the facts, after all, is no guarantee of good governance.

Another example of this might be cigarettes. Despite the best efforts of tobacco companies to hide the truth, it has emerged that cigarette smoking is – guess what – bad for you. For some time now we have known very clearly that there is a product which, when used in the manner designed, kills you. Despite this very clear and disturbing knowledge, cigarettes are legal in every country in the world that they were before we so clearly had this news. Less available and less used, but still there.

So maybe this idea that perfect information sharing will lead to good governance is slightly misguided. Perhaps we should prefer to think that fewer dark secrets will slowly lead us to better approximations of good governance, self-interest and profit-making notwithstanding.

Nevertheless, it sounds pretty good to me.

Where Wikileaks goes next will be interesting. Where Assange and his associates get their money is a good question – for all I know he’s independently wealthy, and just likes to annoy governments for something to do; a thought that makes me a little envious.

Currently the trajectory we’re watching seems to be leading to the eventual plugging of leaks on the side of the US government, with some kind of legal or other action against Assange at the same time to prevent him from trying to publish anything he does receive. One wonders if the US government has stopped to consider that there have been leakers and publishers for a long, long time before Wikileaks arrived.

Having said that, it seems that there are plenty of other places and governments that are worthy of leaking – too many to list here – and so even if the US leaks stop, there are a great many other windmills at which to tilt, and possibly wobble about. In the meantime, would you like to help?

This article is by Scott and was originally published at The Pigs Arms.

In order to foster a more inclusive blog environment, I’ve decided to add an open blog to the front of this site. Basically, as long as you have a registered account on here you can submit a blog post on any topic of your choosing and it will automatically propagate to the front page in the “Open Blog” section. You can post about anything that takes your fancy at the time, short or long – it doesn’t matter.

The posts will automatically be held for moderation if the system detects spam or obscenities, at which point it will be reviewed by myself or someone else with Moderator privileges. Please avoid defamatory statements, racial vilification, hawking your wares and so on. Things like that will be grounds for a ban from the open blog system.

In order to make a post, you must have a registered account on the Bludge. If you haven’t registered already, please do so by clicking here. Posts which are well-written, provocative or garner a large amount of interest will become featured headline articles.

I will be adding the option to upload images shortly, but in the meantime you can upload images to something like http://imageshack.us and include them in your post by using html img tags.

If you have any questions about this new feature, please ask them in the comments below.

As you can see in the above image on the right, it is possible to edit your post later on.

This is an article by a new contributor – Dan Nielsen

Over the past 6 months the tide has well and truly turned against Facebook. At least that’s what the mainstream media would have you believe. While reports fly around of swathes of users fleeing the service, my personal experience indicates nothing of the sort. I’m not using it any less and my friends aren’t using it any less – in fact, I have a number of friends who have joined throughout the ongoing media barrage against the service.

Numerous reports have suggested that Facebook is culpable for various social evils. Incessant attacks against it include claims that it is being exploited by stalkers, used as a trawling ground for paedophiles and as a platform for bullying – especially among school-aged children. This unrelenting focus on fear-driven reporting glosses over the potential positive benefits of the service, including regaining contact with long-lost friends and relatives, increased interactions amongst like-minded people and the sharing of photos amongst friends and family who are spread around the globe.

If you believe the media, nobody is ever bullied in real life, paedophiles only find victims on Facebook and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is the devil incarnate!

Newsflash! Facebook mirrors society.

Those in the media could try offering some useful advice on how to best use Facebook instead of scaremongering. They could also start explaining to people that the real danger of Facebook lies in the fact that some people treat it as a game and not as an extension of society. Facebook is real and to treat it otherwise is to flirt with danger. If you are mindful of its shortcomings and take the necessary steps to protect your information, Facebook can be an extremely useful tool for communication.

Here’s a list of useful tips for looking after your profile:

1. If you don’t want someone to keep appearing as a “Friend Suggestion” add them, then delete them, they will not appear again.
2. Set all your privacy settings to the highest possible.
3. Do not put your mobile phone number or email address onto your profile as “visible”
4. Input a different year for your birth-date, it will help stop people stealing your identity, but your birthday will still appear at the right time.
5. Parents, go through your friends list with your children frequently, asking them where they know each person from, if they don’t know them in the real world, delete them.
6. If you wouldn’t stick a photo onto your front door then don’t put it on Facebook without appropriate security settings.
7. Watch any comments you make on other peoples profiles and as status updates, a jibe over Facebook can be more cutting then one in real life and can be easily misunderstood. It is also viewed by everyone who is on their friend list and your friend list.

Facebook, like society, isn’t perfect. In this time-poor era, it’s a great way to stay in touch. Surely it doesn’t deserve all the bad press that it continually receives in the media.

Editor’s Note: One wonders how much of the anti-Facebook brigade is driven by Murdoch’s desire to damage the brand. After all, Myspace was purchased by News Corp for $580million USD in July 2005 and was the dominant social networking service at the time. Old Rupe probably wasn’t so happy to see his investment diminish in value. That’s not to say that Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook’s founder) is faultless; there is much to question about Facebook’s respect of their users’ privacy, however Myspace is deserving of similar scrutiny. The benefits of Facebook to this site are clear – we’ve been able to organically grow readership through thanks to readers sharing articles and joining our Facebook group.

Over to you, any tips for Facebook security? Any imaginative uses for Facebook? Any suggestions as to why it’s on the receiving end of so much negative media attention?

We rely on social networking for our readership, so please share this article on Facebook or Twitter by using the buttons below.

As of this morning, reports indicate that somewhere between 10 and 19 people were killed when Israeli commandos stormed a Turkish-owned ship of an aid flotilla that was approaching Gaza. The flotilla was organised by activists who wished to draw attention to the blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt after Hamas militants took control of the Gaza strip in 2007. According to the Israelis, upon boarding the ship they were attacked by activists who had armed themselves with “switchblade, slingshots, metal balls and metal bats”, and one of the activists even seized a soldier’s weapon and opened fire. Nevertheless, the boarding took place in international waters and has been roundly condemned by the international community. Turkey has withdrawn its ambassador for the second time in only a few months and it looks as if the once-cordial Israeli-Turkey relations have finally come to an end. Turkey’s strategy from here will likely be to attempt to ramp up international pressure on Israel in order to get them to drop the blockade against Gaza. There is talk that they may also try and take the incident to the International Court. Continue Reading

I never cease to be amazed at the insanity that manages to gain a foothold in the United States. Recently I had the pleasure of stumbling onto this video of shock jock Alex Jones ranting about the police, 911, and “foreign bankers”. For your viewing pleasure:

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For those of you who have been living under a rock (like Tony Abbott), let’s briefly go over the concept of peak oil and why it should concern you. Take a look at this graph:

At first glance, there is a suggestive correlation between oil production and human population growth. Around the turn of the 20th century, oil entered general use and since then oil production and the world population have skyrocketed, almost exponentially. Oil has enabled human civilisation to feed and house ever-greater numbers of people. It is not simply what powers our cars every day, it’s what the entire global economy depends on. The transportation of goods via air, sea or land all require oil. Everything that is produced and consumed by the human race today is dependent on oil. Specifically affordable oil – oil price hikes mean higher transport costs and thus higher costs for food, goods, construction and pretty much everything else you can think of. Continue Reading

Talk about stupid. This is a deal that will deliver nothing to the Liberal Democrats, and probably lose them a great deal of their core supporters. Nick Clegg is deluded to think that the Conservatives could possibly deliver him any sort of real electoral reform.

Let us consider the election results for starters. Minor parties and independents aside, the final results had the Conservatives on 36.1%, Labour on 29% and the Liberal Democrats on 23%. If the UK were to move to a proportional system of representation, which is what the Lib Dems really want, Labour and the Lib Dems would have finished with an overwhelming majority of 52% versus the Conservatives on 36.1%. True proportional representation would likely make it almost impossible for the Conservatives to ever win government again for the forseeable future.

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