Where did I see that fact....thought I saw it lying around here somewhere

Peter Lewis and Jackie Woods

"Over the years, Essential polls have shown how factual misconceptions can skew public debate. We've found a direct correlation between those who overstate the numbers of people seeking asylum and a belief we are too soft on border protection.

          We have also found that concern about Muslim influence in Australia is directly linked to an   
           overestimate in the numbers of Muslims living in Australia.

And we have established the link between acceptance of climate change science and support for measures to reduce carbon emissions."

Strangely the odd fact has a profound effect on public discourse and debate. The electorate is not supplied with the facts, rather a biased or even blatantly untrue set of facts, and are therefore unable to make an informed decision. Of course an untrue fact is an oxymoron but it makes as much sense as anything else this government says.

Friar Tuck and the Robbing Hood Continue on Their Merry Way

Vic Alhadeff

"The late Justice Lionel Murphy said: 'Freedom of speech is what is left over after due weight has been accorded to the laws relating to defamation, blasphemy, copyright, sedition, obscenity, use of insulting words, official secrecy, contempt of court and parliament, incitement and censorship'."

This mockery of a government continues to send a wrecking ball through much of what is good in this country. Will we now build a tradition of defamation, blasphemy...etc. by removing this clause from the anti-discrimination laws? The drivel issuing from the mouths of the libertine extreme represented by Andrew Bolt is testament to the shallow facade covering these disagreeable elements in our society. Tinkering with this legislation will encourage Boltian bigotry and could 'open a floodgate' as they say. At the very least it sends the wrong message.     

The Saga of Friar Tuck and the Robbing Hood Continues

Robert Simms

"Offensive March in March placards and the controversy over the Carolyn Habib pamphlet demonstrate that both sides of politics are guilty of double-standards when it comes to personal denigration, writes"

If you don't want to be offended, don't get into politics. Democratic processes should be about rational debate, agreement (or the agreement to disagree), consensus. All these things happen under the surface and it is true that the personal stuff highlighted here shouldn't be there but that's life in the big smoke as they say.

The march in march was a success and a message to Friar Tuck. He pretended to shrug it off and ignore it but he will have to take such a large demonstration into account, especially when it is supported by intelligent argument. To criticise it because it included some personal stuff against Friar Tuck is to focus on superficiality. 

Another Conservative Myth Debunked

Paul Krugman

"everybody knew that doing anything to reduce inequality would have at least some negative impact on G.D.P.

But it appears that what everyone knew isn’t true. Taking action to reduce the extreme inequality of 21st-century America would probably increase, not reduce, economic growth."

You really do start seeing conspiracies everywhere. A great conservative tome, in this case Arthur Okun's Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff, was hauled out and touted as proof of the truth and justification for maintaining the concentration of obscene wealth in so few hands and the dire consequences of touching this wealth, much as Hayek has been used to justify austerity policies. Beautifully crafted arguments all with the ring of truth and appealing to common sense. All proven to be completely false, except that the application of these arguments had the underlying effect, in addition to any other effect, of maintaining the status quo.

Balanced and Unbiased but Unjustified and Untrue

Julie Novak

"This week, 70 years ago, Friedrich Hayek's book The Road To Serfdom was first published in the United Kingdom. Dedicated "to the socialists of all parties", the book quickly became a bestseller with five reprints within 15 months in the UK, and with US sales in the first six months exceeding initial expectations 10 times over."

"Our freedom of choice in a competitive society rests on the fact that, if one person refuses to satisfy our wishes, we can turn to another. But if we face a monopolist we are at his mercy. And an authority directing the whole economic system would be the most powerful monopolist imaginable."

I appreciate the commitment of the ABC to balanced, unbiased journalism, and that this involves printing both sides of any story no  matter that it is untrue and proven to be untrue by the application of logic and reason, but publishing this drivel is akin to the radio broadcasts of Lord Haw-Haw in the 1940's or the continuing publication of climate change denialism. 

'Freedom of choice' is a myth. Look around you and you will see the homogenation  of the so-called 'free' market. Many of the houses in my neighbourhood are on the market from time to time, and I walk around and look at the display boards, noting all the time how similar these houses are to mine. Cars are the same. Go out and buy any car on the market and you will find that it does pretty much exactly what they all do with a minor, superficial deviation here and there. Even that bastion of Hayekian economic thought Niall Ferguson notes this problem.

I have deconstructed the Austrian School of economic thought on this blog for the past year or so. In fact it has been one of my favourite themes. The ABC chooses to publish the alternative to this in the interests of balanced journalism. I applaud them on this. Fortunately this drivel is shouted down by the voices of  Greg Jericho, David Llewellyn-Smith, Ian Verrender, and Mungo MacCallum, among others.
This is just a token article which no one with half a brain will take any notice of. 

Friar Tuck and the Robbing Hoods Part IV (The Wolf is revealed)

Greg Jericho

"Last week there was a bit of news because various Liberal Party backbenchers were openly talking about penalty rates. It started with Dan Tehan and by the end of the week there were about 10 Government MPs lining up to tell the media they think penalty rates need to go."

Well done, again, Greg Jericho, for a lucid piece.

Did anyone mention deja vous? I was active with GetUp in the Kevin07 campaign when the LNP version of IR Reform was supposedly put to sleep permanently. I was working at a factory in Sydney when the EBA was under negotiation and the AWU turned the Howard Government Attack on it's head.

When you talk about penalty rates you run up against the prima facie argument that an hour's work has the same economic value whether it is consumed on a weekend, public holiday, day of annual leave, sick day, or normal work day. This has credence when you put zero value on common goods, all of which have sociosociatal value (apologies for the abuse of language but coining a new term seemed appropriate). Politicians, indeed all salaried workers, are actually paid penalty rates- they are hidden in the fine print of the employment contract. As part of EBA negotiations average hours worked are calculated as the arithmetic mean of observed hours worked over the entire industry. If you then observe a figure for total economic value created in the same period, divide this number by your Arithmetic mean, and subtract an arbitrary percentage representing profit margin for the company, you then arrive at a fair and equitable hourly wage rate, which can be expanded into an annualised amount, paid as a salary, and everyone can get on with life under win-win conditions.

IR policy is a positive-sum game, under ALP policy. This LNP swill continues to attempt to play their traditional divisive, divide-and-conquer, games, all dressed up in harmless-looking, prima facie, rational-sounding, negative-sum game, clothing.

Beware the wolf. His sheeps'-clothing has now been removed.                

And It's Finally Hit The Fan.....But

The Biennale, Transfield, and the value of boycott

"In July 1846, the American writer Henry David Thoreau went to prison for refusing to pay his poll tax. He couldn’t abide the thought that his money would be used, however indirectly, to perpetuate the Mexican-American war and the institution of slavery. “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison,” Thoreau reasoned, and so that’s where he was."

A breath of fresh air appears to finally be blowing today. Everywhere I look there is counter-argument to the drivel and lies that have polluted the media since the election of this right-wing swill.

We have been here before.

Is this stuff too hard for the mass of people as the mainstream media obviously believes? Are the majority of people really stupid?

I don't believe they are.

But that will not get this stuff in front of the small number of people who's votes determinew government.

At Least We Can Take Some Comfort

The Hammock Fallacy

"Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue. So when you see something like the current scramble by Republicans to declare their deep concern for America’s poor, it’s a good sign, indicating a positive change in social norms. Goodbye, sneering at the 47 percent; hello, fake compassion.

And the big new poverty report from the House Budget Committee, led by Representative Paul Ryan, offers additional reasons for optimism. Mr. Ryan used to rely on “scholarship” from places like the Heritage Foundation. Remember when Heritage declared that the Ryan budget would reduce unemployment to a ludicrous 2.8 percent, then tried to cover its tracks? This time, however, Mr. Ryan is citing a lot of actual social science research."

It's not just here. It's everywhere. Paul Krugman knows the answer and expresses himself very clearly........and is ignored.

Why are we blinded by ideology? If it defies reason then it is ideology. Let's really get rid of it next time. 

Friar Tuck and the Robbing Hoods Part III

Ian Verrender

"It's on again: the great productivity debate."

"It makes for a compelling argument, particularly for an electorate that has grown accustomed to the five second sound bite, repeated ad infinitum.

Unfortunately, like almost everything that passes for political discourse these days, it ignores the evidence, overlooks the logic and ploughs on through to a predictable conclusion that is entirely wrong."

Finally someone who tells it like it is in a similar vein to my verbiage on this blog.

Will it get into the mainstream media where the majority of the electorate have their opinions dictated, since they don't have the time to form their own, because they are enslaved to their mortgage repayments and therefore have to work longer hours than they otherwise would.

This government is running this country into the ground because its policies are blinded by a failed ideology which has created a world existentially threatened by climate change and subject to inevitable economic crises, which have the potential to knock civilization back to the stone age.

The failure of this ideology has been played out before our eyes on the world stage since its original implementation in the 1980's leading directly to the GFC in 2008. Breathtaking human suffering has been caused. Why do we continue to follow it?

The Continuing Saga of Friar Tuck and the Robbing Hood Part II

Stephen Koukoulas - Per Capita

"All of which suggests the hidden agenda of reform to the labour market slowly but surely being unfurled by the Coalition government since the election is not really about macroeconomic management."

Oh Really. What on Earth could it possibly be about then?

This article is way too diplomatic. The above quote is the only reference in this entire article - an article with such an alarming title - to the re-emergence of the work-choices bogey supposedly killed off in the Kevin-07 election.

When will people wake up? The ancient antagonism between the forces of capital and the forces of labour, embodied in the political conflict between the ALP and the LNP, doesn't magically disappear when you abandon the union movement and allow another round of marginally legitimate LNP government.

Progressive forces all over the world need to harden themselves and get down and dirty. They are pitted against neoliberal ideologues who know exactly how free markets work in capitalist economies, and are prepared to use every weapon available - to win. If the powers of progress can not bring themselves to play the free marketeers at their own game, then we are all well and truly doomed.

The Continuing Saga of Friar Tuck and the Robbing Hood Part I

Jonathon Green

"Young people will struggle to imagine that there can ever have been a mainstream expression of hardline leftist thinking, a school of thought represented today by a few tattered remnants; a half a dozen spotty vendors of Green Left Weekly huddled defiantly by a card table in a stream of oblivious commuters."

They'll be strugglin' a'right. Subsistence wages for slaving at the job 12 hours a day.

Fools.

Could've easily been  avoided.

The Great Continuing Saga of Friar Tuck and The Robbing Hood

Jonathan Green

"The conservative commentariat is still railing against a hardline left which is almost exclusively represented in modern times by half a dozen spotty vendors of Green Left Weekly."

Where can we find the next bogey-man-to-beat-up. Those ignorant low-borns won't know what to think. Oh no Joe please don't go. No, no Joe.

"A hankering for a time when ideological divisions were rich, clear and meaningful, when a clear sense of what separated the left and the right gave a certain rhythm to the cut and thrust of mainstream politics."

This is such a LIE. Ideology is vastly important. Good God : an asteroid is coming close to  our annihilation and you say it's unimportant? The salvation of the planet relies on this concept.

Oh Jonathon. What shall we say to this?

"In early 1886, the Texas & Pacific Railroad fired a leader of the district assembly of the Knights of Labor, and this led to a strike which spread throughout the Southwest, tying up traffic as far as St. Louis and Kansas City. Nine young men recruited in New Orleans as marshals, brought to Texas to protect company property, learned about the strike and quit their jobs, saying, “as man to man we could not justifiably go to work and take the bread out of our fellow-workmen’s mouths, no matter how much we needed it ourselves.” They were then arrested for defrauding the company by refusing to work, and sentenced to three months in the Galveston county jail. The strikers engaged in sabotage. A news dispatch from Atchison, Kansas: At 12: 45 this morning the men on guard at the Missouri Pacific roundhouse were surprised by the appearance of 35 or 40 masked men. The guards were corralled in the oil room by a detachment of the visitors who stood guard with pistols . . . while the rest of them thoroughly disabled 12 locomotives which stood in the stalls."

Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present (p. 269). Harper Perennial Modern Classics. Kindle Edition.

Is this ideology? No, these are only facts, things that actually happened. It is because of the lies of Friar Tuck and the Robbing Hood that another myth is created about the disappearance of ideology. It reminds me of that 'budget emergency' we were searching for, high and low, before the election. Was that my ideology? oh no I missed it again.

Why do you procreate the myth by giving it credence on the media?

Which brings us to the crux of the matter.

It is LNP policy to drive wages down to the level of subsistence existing in China (in fact, if you look at their policy on Qantas, they want all our assets to be owned and operated for profit by state owned Chinese enterprises). Part of their strategy for achieving this is to convince the electorate that the ideological battles of the previous two centuries are in the past: 'blowing in the wind', passing wind in the process. This has lead to the abandonment of union membership we see today. They have fooled everyone into believing that we have all grown up now and it can't happen again.

This is all just lulling their opponents into a false sense of security prior to a blood-letting of supreme importance.

People died and blood was spilt to get everyone their job security and wages and working hours.

If we get lucky, a few of us may still have these things by the end of this term of government.

every body fell for it.

        

 

Usually a Better Way

Ivor Roberts

"Yet appeasement has continued to get a bad press and this has infected the political thinking of those born too young to have fought in wars and too ignorant of history to absorb its lessons."

This is a delightful article. It never quite comes out and makes too many points though. Historians tend to be much too diplomatic and water down their content accordingly. How would they ever get published if they didn't?

The phrase 'too ignorant of history' rang some bells for me. To misquote a wise man, something about perhaps 'too ignorant of history to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past'.

Howard Zinn , a historian/activist, someone who practiced what they preached, in his seminal and highly readable "Peoples' History of the United States" points out the failings of history, how things can be left out or barely mentioned, or coloured and stressed differently, so 'ignorant of history' will also mean those who know all about 'history', meaning history as approved by the dominant ideology only.

When I went through school Christopher Columbus was a hero, a groundbreaking far-sighted genious who took his heart in his hands and set out into the unknown on the promise of what we would now call rumour, not a ruthless scammer who duped the monarchs of Spain into backing him financially time and again on the promise of dubious loot and pillage and then cruelly conquered vast swathes of the planet killing and stealing as he went.

In Australia you just never heard of massacres of aboriginals. The truth was so well burried that you would have had to go back to original source documents and eye-witness accounts to find it. Even then you wouldn't know who to believe as reputable people contradicted this information at every turn.

As a policy 'appeasement' did not exist to appease, but to buy time to rearm in the face of superior military strength. 'The war to end all wars'; 'The war that ended peace' had ensnared the world's leader in their own lies, causing them to think it was then OK to drop their guard permanently and disarm.

The truth is always in the middle.      

Stalin's Last Hurrah

Goodbye Ukraine and thanks for the fish

Civil war may be the only solution to the Ukrainian dilemma. After colonisation of Ukraine by first Czarist then Stalinist Russia through the better part of two centuries the Russian segment of society is almost as numerous as the Ukrainian.

Unless the two sides can compromise there will need to be two Ukraines.