Aussie Racism – it’s time to Stop. Think.…
Political commentator Andrew Bolt said recently that Australia is fundamentally not a…
Tag: Andrew Bolt
For a very long time, Aboriginal people were given very little chance to reply to racist comments, in a media saturated by non-Indigenous voices. It was just one of the reasons behind the emergence of an Aboriginal media, which thrives in some sections, but is nonetheless, constantly endangered.
The importance of Aboriginal media was demonstrated this week, when Gameroi journalist Danny Teece Johnson posed a vital question in a piece for NITV National News.
His target was former Labor MP Gary Johns – a frequent and perhaps unwelcome commentator on Aboriginal affairs – and right-wing shock jock Andrew Bolt, known for his obsession with the identity of light-skinned Aboriginal people, and for his campaign to deprive the Stolen Generations of true justice and.
Johns had appeared on The Bolt Show, which screens on Channel Ten every Sunday morning, where he had used an already inaccurate discussion on constitutional reform to highlight his offensive, disgusting, overtly racist views about Aboriginal women.
According to Johns: “Look, a lot of poor women in this country, a large proportion of whom are Aboriginal, are used as cash cows, right? They are kept pregnant and producing children for the cash. Now, that has to stop.”
Johns prefaced his offensive comments by quoting the disproportionately high rates of family violence perpetuated against Aboriginal women. But his comments were in itself a form of emotional abuse, which is too often inflicted on Aboriginal women. Only this time, instead of coming from those closest, it came in the form of a privileged white man with a media platform that far outweighs his intellect.
And where did his comments come from? According to Aboriginal academic Prof Marcia Langton, it was from a piece in The Monthly she wrote on the new Healthy Welfare Card, a proposal of mining magnate and saviour of blackfellas, in the eyes of his public relations team at least, Andrew Twiggy Forrest.
Prof Langton took to Twitter to claim an anecdote in her piece had been misinterpreted by Johns. She had written “social security entitlements for single parents are a rich playground for male welfare ‘gamers’ across the country, regardless of ethnic or cultural background”.
“In some parts of Australia, pregnancies are not accidents – they are planned so that women can obtain additional social security payments for each child, which are then harvested by the men as a livelihood. These men move from women to women, and they call their exploits by a variety of names, including ‘bareback riding’,” she wrote.
How Johns twisted this comment into a sick tirade against Aboriginal women and their reproductive choices, continuing the historical legacy of demonising and demoralising them, is indicative of a cancerous strain of the mainstream media intent on stripping Aboriginal communities of their humanity.
It also demonstrates how men like Johns will take anything out of context in order to make sweeping, broad statements that defame Aboriginal women, in order to suit their own agenda.
The fact Prof Langton was using an anecdote of this sort to advocate for a controversial piece of welfare reform based on the recommendations of Forrest is another matter entirely.
As the national media finally turns its attention to family violence, the majority of Aboriginal women are again deprived of their voice, they become docile caricatures whom things are ‘done’ to. And there is very little right of reply. Which is where the importance of Aboriginal and independent media comes in.
Welling up in frustration, Danny Teece Johnson asked his NITV audience on Tuesday night: “Imagine if NITV had a TV show where a panel of three Aboriginal commentators spent 30 minutes every Sunday morning demonising white Australians?
“We’d be off the air quicker than you can say treaty.”
Which is true, although I think a majority of Australians find the idea of ‘treaty’ just as unpalatable.
Teece Johnson then went on to compare Johns’ comments to the recent furore over Zaky Mallah’s appearance on ABC Q&A, which sparked outrage from the Abbott government and resulted in a review.
Teece Johnson said on NITV News “so while Bolt and his all-Anglo panel take turns whacking their Aboriginal piñata, we ask whether a major commercial network should provide a platform for these types of attacks on minority groups.
“… Andrew Bolt has built a career on his inflammatory style and unashamedly conservative agenda,” he said. “But as the federal government comes down hard on ABC’s Q&A…. over questions of editorial ethics, the Bolt report remains a protected series. Surely a prime time discussion that fuels racist stereotypes and blames the victim, is potentially more damaging to Australia’s First Peoples than Zaky Mallah’s brief appearance on Q&A to Australia’s war on terror.”
For what it’s worth, Andrew Bolt doesn’t consider Gary John’s comments ‘racist’.
“Gary Johns made important points in a debate. They were in no way racist, particularly given that he specifically noted he was talking of poor people, both Aboriginal people and non-Aboriginal,” Bolt told NITV.
“Stop playing the outrage game and engage with the real issues that Gary is so passionate about – the deadly welfare culture that keeps poor people poor.
“Screaming ‘racist’ is pathetic.”
Which demonstrates exactly why the views of Johns and Bolt are so dangerous, and the failure by white Australia to be collectively outraged as a nation, is even more insidious.
Bolt does not understand the nature of Australian racism, because he is a frequent perpetrator of it. He claims that any attempt to recognise Aboriginal people in the constitution, is ‘racist’. He claims a constitutional guarantee for an Indigenous advisory body is ‘racist’. He claims somehow removing the racial provisions in the nation’s founding document are somehow ‘racist’.
He wouldn’t know a racist if it was staring in front of him in the mirror every morning.
Why do we let men like Bolt and Johns continue to parade their disgusting, bigoted views on mainstream television? What would happen if Aboriginal media actually had the budget to comment on the streams of rubbish produced by the pens of people like Bolt?
Instead, the Abbott government treats him like a protected species.
We even have national debates about amending legislation designed to protect minorities when he is called out on his shoddy journalism.
Aboriginal women shouldn’t be made to feel ashamed for having children, for wanting what so many other Australian women want. They should not be vilified as ‘cows’ who do not respect their children, just as all Aboriginal men shouldn’t be demonsied as child abusers.
If Aboriginal journalists produced the same nonsense as Johns and Bolt we would be rightly called out on it. But we don’t. Because we know about the consequences of words. We’ve seen it in policies like the NT intervention, how lies about Aboriginal men, women and children can lead to disgusting discriminatory policies that are condemned internationally.
Let’s hope one day people like Bolt and Johns feel the extent of those consequences too.
– See more at: https://newmatilda.com/2015/07/16/black-power-press-face-andrew-bolts-white-media-noise#sthash.Yxc4FSTt.dpuf
Why USA Today’s Editorial Comparing Greek Crisis To U.S. Is a Trojan Horse
USA Today‘s editorial board published a misleading editorial comparing the economic crisis currently crippling Greece with the economic problems facing the United States, fear mongering that a similar crisis could happen “in as little as a decade.” But economists have repeatedly dismissed the comparison, explaining that the U.S. economy is dissimilar from Greece and therefore unlikely to face a similar debt crisis.
On July 6, the editorial board published a piece claiming that the United States could find itself in a Greece-like economic and financial crisis as a result of America’s debt and entitlements. According to the editorial board, “Greece is just further along” in its debt crisis however, Americans can expect a major shock “in as little as a decade.”
Both countries have amassed large debts. Both are run by politicians eager to tell voters what they want to hear about national finances, not what they need to hear. Both have aging populations. Both are familiar with irresponsible banks lending to irresponsible borrowers. And both have been plunging headlong towards debt crises.
Greece is just further along.
[…]
Yet efforts to even modestly curtail health benefits, or any other “entitlement” programs for that matter, meet thunderous opposition from politicians, labor unions, senior citizen groups and others. Often, the objections are couched in language of people having “earned” their benefits after a lifetime of work.
In fact, they’ve earned a portion of their benefits. An average couple that retired in 2010, for instance, will receive $387,000 in Medicare benefits after having paid $122,000 in Medicare taxes while working. Social Security is in somewhat better shape but it, too, will soon have to start drawing down its reserves, adding more red ink to the budget.
Unless benefit programs are reined in, America is heading for its own debt crisis. It won’t be complicated by whether it should drop out of a currency union. And it might be delayed by a vibrant and innovative private sector. But it could arrive in as little as a decade. And then everything will seem Greek to us.
USA Today‘s doom and gloom predictions are indistinguishable from the cartoonish fearmongering that has been promoted by Fox News since 2010.
But many economists rebuff these dire predictions posited by media outlets over the past five years.
Washington Post contributor and international political economist Daniel Drezner blasted media outlets for allowing the “re-emergence of a Greece-related meme that should have died of shame and embarrassment about four years ago.” According to Drezner, after years of the media predicting a Greek-like disaster “exactly none of these things have come to pass.”
And on the July 5 edition of ABC’s This Week, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman downplayed the impact of the Greek debt crisis for other developed economies, explaining that Greece’s GDP is roughly equal to that of Miami, Florida. Krugman also argued in his New York Times column that U.S.-Greece comparisons are unreliable, since they project debt in future decades and assume fiscal policies remain static.
Um, that’s comparing a (highly uncertain) projection of debt 20 years from now — a projection that’s based on the assumption of unchanged policy — with actual debt now. Actual US federal debt is only about half that high now. And it’s worth pointing out that Greek debt is projected to rise to 149 percent of GDP over the next few years — and that’s with the austerity measures agreed with the IMF.
[…]
Basically, the United States can expect economic recovery to bring the deficit down substantially; Greece, which has a larger structural deficit and also faces a grinding adjustment to overvaluation with the eurozone, can’t.
Yes, the United States needs fiscal adjustment — Auerbach and Gale say that we have a long-run fiscal imbalance of 6-plus percent of GDP, although much of that could be closed by reining in health costs. But we really don’t look much like Greece.
From David Gregory to Andrew Ross Sorkin to David Brooks, the ranks of Washington’s hottest new club continues to swell. Call it Journalists Against Journalism — a group of reporters and pundits who are outraged that whistle-blowers and news organizations are colluding to expose illegal government surveillance. To this club, the best journalism is not the kind that challenges power or even merely sheds light on the inner workings of government; it is about protecting power and keeping the lights off.
Before today, this club could be seen as a collection of individuals. But not anymore, thanks to the hard-to-believe house editorial of the Washington Post titled “Plugging the Leaks in the Edward Snowden Case.” Inveighing against the disclosures of NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the paper wrote that “the first U.S. priority should be to prevent Mr. Snowden from leaking information” and then fretted that Snowden “is reported to have stolen many more documents, encrypted copies of which may have been given to allies such as the WikiLeaks organization.”
What’s so utterly revealing about this editorial is not merely that it reads like hard-boiled talking points given to politicians by their surveillance-industry campaign donors. No, what sets this Washington Post editorial apart — what vaults it into the annals of history — is how it is essentially railing on the Washington Post’s own source and own journalism.
Yes, that’s right, the Post was one of two news organizations that Snowden originally contacted and that subsequently began breaking the NSA stories. That means the Washington Post editorial represents the paper’s higher-ups issuing a jeremiad against their own news-generating source and, by extension, the reporters who helped bring his leak into the public sphere.
Such an unprecedented move exposes the intensity of the paper’s — and the larger establishment media’s — ideological antipathy to journalism. Simply put, the Post’s higher-ups are apparently so ideologically committed to subservience and to the national security state that they felt the need to take the extraordinary step of publicly reprimanding their own source and their own newsroom for the alleged crime of committing journalism. Indeed, their concern is not that Snowden and journalists might be muzzled, but that they might not be before they break any more news.
As overused as Watergate analogies are, one is particularly apt in this case because of the paper in question. And that analogy should be obvious: Today’s editorial is the equivalent of the paper issuing an editorial in 1972 not demanding more information from President Nixon, but instead insisting the Nixon administration’s first “priority should be to prevent Deep Throat from leaking information” and worrying that Deep Throat “is reported to have more information” that could soon be broken by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
At one level, this is all downright hilarious. But at another level, it isn’t because it potentially intensifies a larger chilling effect on investigative journalism that is happening throughout the media. After all, even though there is theoretically a divide between editorial boards and newsrooms, the former is known to speak for the decision makers at a newspaper. And here we have one of the biggest set of media decision-makers saying to reporters at the Post — and all those reporters elsewhere, who hope one day to work at the Post — that cultivating sources and working with whistle-blowers is not something that will necessarily be rewarded.
In fact, it says quite the opposite: that it won’t be rewarded, and it will more likely be frowned upon. You can bet every reporter who reads that editorial will understand that message, and many will unfortunately take it to heart.
David Sirota is a senior writer for the International Business Times
“You would not think this whinger and peddler of poor-me victimhood was actually the pampered wife of the President of the United States.”
“We’ve both felt the sting of those daily slights throughout our entire lives. The folks who crossed the street in fear of their safety, the clerks who kept a close eye on us in all those department stores. The people at formal events who assumed we were the help,” she said. “And those who have questioned our intelligence, our honesty, even our love of this country, and I know that these little indignities are obviously nothing compared to what folks across the country are dealing with every single day. Those nagging worries about whether you’re going to get stopped or pulled over for absolutely no reason. The fear that your job application will be overlooked because of the way your name sounds.”
Andrew Bolt’s Racism is clearly expressed in that;
“Obama is not entitled to her experiences, certainly not to talk about them,” going on: “[J]ust as Eleanor Roosevelt articulated the experiences and plight of the poor as well as racial and ethnic minorities, so does Michelle Obama articulate the black experience. If that sometimes makes others uncomfortable, it damn well should.”
Bolt tends to cry reverse racism when the Obamas of this world raise it. Then Noel Pearson gets labelled an”active racial agitator” Bolt wants to let bygones be bygones. All is forgotten and forgiven eliminate history. Clean the slate and start afresh. If only it were that simple. But it’s not. This whole line of reasoning is racial crap running from the dread of compensation or trying to close the gap.
Bolt’s problem with outspoken indigenous elders is they don’t encourage silence about inequity nor do other groups who feel disadvantaged rather they shine a light on it. As a consequence the ineqitie’s benefactors cant enjoy the cumulative fruit of centuries of racial graft or decades of migrant exploitation without current-day guilt.
In disallowing and denying others their personal experiences and even sharing those experiences with others Bolt found himself in trouble under the Racial Discrimination Act and Section 18C. Race may not exist in scientific terms however for something that doesn’t exist it sure has an impact on peoples daily lives. Something Racists refuse to accept and when brought up they cry foul and victimization.
Politicians and media are fuelling a bigoted atmosphere with rhetoric that problematises Islam.
About the Author
Hatem Bazian
Hatem Bazian is a lecturer in the Departments of Near Eastern and Ethnic Studies at University of California, Berkeley.
“Vaccinate” against Sharia; demands to “publicly announce allegiance to America and our laws”; and Islam “is a cancer in our nation that needs to be cut out” are a few recent statements by US political leaders pointing to the level of toxicity and bigotry directed at Muslims in the country.
As American Muslims mourn the loss of Deah Barakat, his wife Yusor Abu-Salha, and her sister Razan Abu-Salha, important questions arise as to the link between the vitriolic rhetoric directed at Muslims in western civil society and violence targeting members of this religious and powerless minority group.
How to understand what is taking place and should we be more alarmed about the violent turn of events or is this only an isolated incident by a mentally unstable person and no further conclusions should be deduced from it?
The isolated incident, as the media and political leaders emphasise, has to be dispensed with immediately as the trail of hate motivated attacks is evident in Wade Michael Page mass murder at the Sikh Gurdwara (house of worship) in Oak Creek, Wisconsin in 2012, and the Anders Breivik’s Norway slaughter in July 2011.
Bigoted atmosphere
More alarming on the individual level is the readiness of a 31-year-old New York woman on December 27, 2012 to push Sunando Sen, a 47-year-old immigrant from India, in the path of an incoming train. The woman admitted to purposely pushing Sen off of the subway platform stating: “I pushed a Muslim off the train tracks because I hate Hindus and Muslims.”
Make no mistake about it. Wade Michael Page, Anders Breivik, Craig Stephen Hicks and Erika Menendez are all responsible for the actual murders; however the political leadership and media talking heads provided the racist and bigoted atmosphere by daily engaging in problematising Islam and Muslims.
Yes, we can speak of crimes committed by terrorists in the name of Islam around the world; however, the media and western political elites have constructed a propaganda machine that epistemologically “otherises” Muslims while relegating them to sub-humanness status and as savages at the gates of civilisation.
The status and position of Muslims within American and European civil society is deteriorating rapidly and immediate remedies are needed to counter it.
Without doubt, events involving Muslims in various parts of the world have contributed to the collapse of the Muslim status but there is much to be said about the role of right-wing politicians whose careers depend upon racist and “otherising” xenophobic rhetoric.
The list of political parties and figures that employ Islamophobia to gain votes include Austria’s National Freedom Front, France’s Le Pen-National Front, Netherlands’ People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, Germany’s National Democratic Party, Norway’s Progress Party, Britain’s Independent Party (UKIP), Switzerland’s People’s Party, Greece’s Golden Dawn Party, Poland’s Congress of the New Right Party and the US’ Tea Party.
The politically sanctioned bigotry towards Muslims living in the aforementioned countries stems from leaders and established parties who have made strategic calculations as to the documented success of this messaging and the ability to win votes at the ballot box. Events involving Muslims, such as terrorist attacks at home and abroad, are packaged into racist campaign advertisements.
Rising fascist state
The rhetoric has led to the externalisation of Muslims, while demanding greater levels of state intrusion into their religious and private space, supposedly to secure the motherland from their collective harm. Consequently, a comparison must be made as to the early formative period of Nazi Germany campaign against the Jews and whether the right-wing machinery is rewriting the history today but with Muslim names and faces attached to it.
In Nazi Germany, starting immediately after Hitler came to power in 1933, Dr Joseph Goebbels was appointed minister of propaganda and national enlightenment in charge of constructing the “civilised” image for the rising fascist state.
Months after coming to power, the Nazi Party was emboldened to organise public burning of books that did not correspond to Hitler’s racist and distorted Aryan ideology. Goebbels set up an infrastructure that on the one hand monitored anything that strayed from the prescribed nationalist narrative while on the other hand worked to produce “literature, music, films, radio programmes and newspaper” articles that promoted the Nazi ideology.
These tactics had devastating consequences by 1938. A straight line can be drawn linking nationally produced racist political propaganda and the death and destruction visited upon the Jews and countless others in the Holocaust.
| Germany’s Nazi history and what it unleashed on the world with its well-oiled propaganda machine is well documented but unfortunately the lessons … are downplayed, forgotten or completely obfuscated. |
Germany’s Nazi history and what it unleashed on the world with its well-oiled propaganda machine is well documented but unfortunately the lessons from the racist and xenophobic rhetoric directed at minorities are downplayed, forgotten or completely obfuscated.
There are clear parallels to the experience of Muslims living in western countries today and Nazi Germany.
Islamophobic rhetoric
Let’s be clear that we are not at a “1938 moment” of Hitler’s Nazi Germany but the basis of comparison today is one of approach and structure to the rhetoric deployed against Muslim citizens of western countries. Certainly, Islamophobic rhetoric has become normal, pervasive and even “dignified” in public discourse.
One can hardly pick a newspaper without reading negative stories involving Muslims. Likewise, radio and TV programming are filled to the brim with Islamophobic content masquerading as “real news” or “informed opinions” with an avalanche of bigoted and essentialist content focusing on Muslims.
The link between bigoted speech and violence is well established but forming the right policies and setting up the preventative infrastructure is difficult to come by at a time when the political elites are themselves producing it.
Currently and at the federal level, a hate crime law is on the books but Daryl Johnson, author of a DHS report on right-wing extremism, illustrates the challenge faced by his office: “In the face of enormous media and congressional criticism, DHS made the decision to cancel all of its domestic terrorism-related reporting and training for law enforcement.”
The lack of institutional support because the political leadership itself and the national media are intent on otherising Muslims and minorities, leave the possibility of racist and bigoted attacks a possibility in the future, with communities left to fend for themselves.
Hatem Bazian is co-editor and founder of the Islamophobia Studies Journal and director of the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project, and a senior lecturer in the Departments of Near Eastern and Ethnic Studies at University of California, Berkeley.
“We’re very grateful for Netanyahu’s concern but having said that, we are Danish — we’re Danish Jews but we’re Danish — and it won’t be terror that makes us go to Israel,” said a spokesman for the Jewish Community in Denmark, Jeppe Juhl.
“So we understand his concern for our well-being, and we value his concern but we are Danish and we’re staying in Denmark. If we move to Israel it’s for other reasons,” he told AFP.
Netanyahu on Sunday urged European Jews to move to Israel after a Jewish man was killed outside Copenhagen’s main synagogue in one of two attacks in the city at the weekend.
“Israel is your home. We are preparing and calling for the absorption of mass immigration from Europe,” Netanyahu said in a statement, repeating a similar call after attacks by jihadists in Paris last month that killed 17 people including four Jews.
Danish intelligence said the gunman who opened fire outside the synagogue and a cultural centre may have been inspired by last month’s Islamist attacks in Paris.
Two policemen who were injured outside the synagogue had been posted there after community leaders contacted authorities following Saturday’s shooting at the community centre that left one person dead.
Around 8,000 Jews live in Denmark, most of them in Copenhagen and with smaller communities in the cities of Aarhus and Odense, according to the Jewish Community of Denmark.
During the Gaza conflict in August, Copenhagen’s Jewish school, Carolineskolen, had its windows smashed and anti-Jewish graffiti spray-painted on its walls.
The incident took place shortly after a rise in anti-Semitic crimes in Denmark prompted politicians to organise a “kippah march” in Copenhagen in support of Jewish people’s right to display their religion openly.
BLUE MOUNTAIN BEACH, CRETONIA (CT&P) – In a romantic Valentine’s Day ceremony Jerry Dickerson let the world know that he continues to be in a deep and loving relationship with himself. The moving ceremony took place at sunset on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico in Blue Mountain Beach.
In attendance were hundreds of Dickerson’s imaginary friends, thousands of phantasmal readers of his blog, and numerous apocryphal admirers from all over the planet. A reception was held at the Tom Thumb Convenience Store #37 at the corner of 331 South and U.S. Highway 98 West.
“It was a truly moving experience, said Walton County Deputy Sheriff Larry “Lardass” Langford, who happened to be driving by.
“I was just making my normal rounds on the beach protecting residents from ISIS frogmen and writing tickets to tourists who seemed to be having too much fun, and I happened upon this sacred and inspirational event.”
“I’ll never forget it,” said Langford. “Dickerson’s level of dedication to himself was heart warming. It brought tears to my eyes. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so deeply devoted to the preservation of his own well-being and happiness. It really caused me to question my level of commitment to my wife Ethyl.”
When interviewed by Channel 7 Action News after the ceremony, Dickerson said, “I just wanted the world to know that I have found my soul mate, and he is me.”
Dickerson agreed with himself saying, “I really admire my life partner’s manly physique, outgoing personality, rapier wit, and above all his towering intellect.”
When interviewed, Dickerson’s mother Charlene told reporters “I just don’t see anyone breaking up this beautiful long term relationship that Jerry has with Jerry.”
“I know in my heart that no one will ever be able to love my son as much as he loves himself,” said the emotional and long-suffering mom.
After the reception Dickerson treated himself to a steak dinner at Angelo’s Steak Pit and then went back to his mom’s condo to unwind and enjoy seven soccer matches in succession.
Dickerson plans on spending some quality time alone with himself along the romantic Emerald Coast before returning to his home outside Murphy, North Carolina where he plans on dedicating the rest of his life to making himself happy.
COPENHAGEN, Feb 15 (Reuters) – The gunman believed to have attacked a Copenhagen synagogue and a free speech event on Saturday was a Danish-born 22-year-old known to police because of past violence, gang-related activities and possession of weapons, police said in a statement on Sunday.
Police said they had identified the man, who was killed in an early-morning shootout on Sunday, but did not release his name. (Reporting by Teis Jensen; Writing by Balazs Koranyi; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
Skeptics think they’ve debunked global warming. Once again, they’re wrong.
The article, written by Christopher Booker (who flat out denies human-induced global warming), is somewhat subtly titled “The Fiddling With Temperature Data Is the Biggest Science Scandal Ever.” In it, Booker claims that climate scientists have adjusted temperature readings from thermometers in Paraguay to make it look like the temperature is increasing, when the measurements off the detectors actually show the opposite. The theme of the article is that scientists “manipulated” the data on purpose to exaggerate global warming.
This is nonsense. The claim is wrong. The scientists didn’t manipulate the data, they processed it. That’s a very different thing. And the reason they do it isn’t hard to understand.
Imagine you want to measure the daily temperature in a field near a town. You want to make sure the measurements you get aren’t affected by whether it’s cloudy or sunny—direct sunlight on the thermometer will increase the temperature you measure—so you set it up in a reflective box. Look: Right away you’ve adjusted the temperature, even before you’ve taken a measurement! You’ve made sure an outside influence doesn’t affect your data adversely. That’s a good thing.
So you start reading the data, but over time someone buys the property near the field, and builds houses there. Driveways, roads, houses leaking heat…this all affects your thermometer. Perhaps a building is erected that casts a shadow over your location. Whatever: You have to account for all these effects.
That’s what scientists do. That’s what scientists did. They examined the data from these thermometers all over the world, and tried to minimize the impact of outside influences. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be able to trust the data.
How you correct the data is important, of course, and this is where the second claim comes in: Scientists manipulated the data specifically to make it look like global warming is stronger than it really is.
Ah, but we know that’s not true! A few years ago, an independent group at Berkeley Earth took that same temperature data and re-examined it, processing it in a different way. Guess what they found?
Yup. The planet’s warming up, and pretty much just as the other scientists had said. You can read more about this in an excellent article by Neville Nicholls, who is an expert in how meteorological measurements need to be adjusted in this way. There’s more at the “…and then there’s Physics” blog and at Real Sceptic, and Skeptical Science has an article debunking this as well.
A graph is worth a thousand words. Here are the results of the Berkeley research compared with various other groups:
The recalibrated temperatures by the Berkeley group (black) versus various other groups. In the past, measurements are less certain, but in modern times they converge and all trend the same way. Berkeley Earth
As you can see, there’s virtually no difference. As long as the measurements are processed properly they show what we know, what we’ve known, for quite some time: The world is warming up, and it’s warming up rapidly.
So, far from being “the biggest science scandal ever,” this isn’t even a scandal at all, and is in fact how science works. You can’t just take raw data off a detector and claim it’s real; if you do so, then at best you’d be fooling yourself, and at worst you’d be trying to fool others. And that’s certainly not how science works.
![In western news discourse, the implication is western societies should be suspicious of Muslims, writes Elmasry [Facebook]](https://i0.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2015/2/11/259c9632f3cb4bd4b659a9b920674791_18.jpg "Chapel Hill shooting and western media bigotry")
Mohamad Elmasry
Dr Mohamad Elmasry is an assistant professor in the Department of Communications at the University of North Alabama.
Three Muslim Americans were murdered on Tuesday in a University of North Carolina dorm room. The crime came on the heels of recent anti-Muslim attacks in Europe, carried out in apparent response to the January murders (committed by Muslims) of Charlie Hebdo journalists in Paris.
Western media outlets will likely frame the most recent perpetrator of what some speculate is an anti-Muslim crime in the same way they frame most anti-Muslim criminals – as crazed, misguided bigots who acted alone. If past coverage is any indication, there will likely be very little suggestion that the killer acted on the basis of an ideology or as part of any larger pattern or system.
But what if acts of anti-Muslim violence are consistent with at least some strands of current western ideology? What if Islamophobia has become so commonplace, so accepted, that it now represents a hegemonic system of thought, at least for relatively large pockets of people in some regions of the West?
Portraying Islam
Given what we know both about western media portrayals of Islam and Muslims on the one hand, and media effects and theory on the other hand, it would be foolish to dismiss western media representations as potential causal factors in anti-Muslim sentiment and crime. In fact, it is likely that anti-Muslim sentiment and crime are, at least in part, driven by one-sided, narrow, sensationalistic, and arguably bigoted western media portrayals of Islam and Muslims.
Many scholars – including Edward Said, Elizabeth Poole, Kai Hafez, Milly Williamson, Karim Karim, Teun Van Dijk, Kimberly Powell, and Dina Ibrahim, among others – have carried out academic studies examining western news coverage of Islam and Muslims.
Results suggest that Muslims are often portrayed in western news media as violent, backwards, fundamentalist and as threats to western civilisation. Western news coverage rarely highlights Islam except to show its possible relation to some atrocity, and Muslims are rarely mentioned in the context of news that is positive or benign.
Several studies have found that Muslims are portrayed as a homogenised body, lacking diversity and difference, with other analyses showing that news coverage of violent conflicts in the Muslim-majority world ignores context and circumstances, implying that Muslims are inherently violent and prone to conflict.
Inconsistent coverage
Other studies show inconsistent coverage of violent global and regional conflicts. When Christians, Jews and other non-Muslims are killed by Muslims, Islam is identified as playing a direct role. When Muslims are killed by Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims, however, the religious identity of the violent perpetrators is downplayed or ignored.
The ongoing conflict in Burma represents a good case-in-point. There has been little western news coverage on the recent persecution faced by Rohingya Muslims, who Human Rights Watch says have been subjected to mass killings; “crimes against humanity” and “ethnic cleansing”.
Most recently, American television news networks have underlined a possible association between groups like al-Qaeda and ISIL, on the one hand, and Islamic religious doctrine on the other. Analysts claiming that “Islam is the problem” are given prominent platforms on news talk shows, while expert Muslim voices are systematically ignored.
Notably – and in spite of the fact that each act of Muslim-perpetrated terrorism is condemned strongly by all notable Islamic universities, Islamic scholarly councils, Islamic organisations, Muslim governments, and prominent Muslim jurists – regular cries are heard from media personalities complaining that Muslims do not condemn terrorism.
Prominent media personalities
Remarkably, some prominent media personalities systematically ignore Muslim condemnations of terrorism and then scream loudly that Muslims aren’t condemning terror. Recently, both Rupert Murdoch and Piers Morgan claimed that it is primarily the responsibility of Muslims to root out and defeat the likes of al-Qaeda and ISIL.
| In much of the western news discourse, the implication always seems clear; western societies should be suspicious of Muslims – all Muslims. |
Ignored in these analyses, of course, are the facts that Muslims in many Muslim-majority countries are often preoccupied, battling brutal dictatorships (which are often propped up by western nations, including the US), acute poverty, and regular bombing campaigns, all of which have helped create the conditions under which groups like al-Qaeda and ISIL – both of whom kill many more Muslims than non-Muslims – thrive.
In much of the western news discourse, the implication always seems clear; western societies should be suspicious of Muslims – all Muslims. Various pundits have taken to prominent media to offer up inflated estimates of the number of Muslim terrorists, with some suggesting that “peaceful” Muslims are, in the first place, a minority, and, more importantly, only peaceful because they have misunderstood the teachings of their inherently violent religion.
Always ignored is empirical evidence – of which there is no shortage – showing that Muslims aren’t more violent than non-Muslims and that the overwhelming majority of Muslims believe terrorism to be an abomination.
The discussions carried out on television news programmes are not surprising given the structural problems associated with western news, and, importantly, the basic imbalance in sourcing. Why, for example, is Hamza Hansen, a top Muslim American public intellectual, not given a regular platform on news networks alongside anti-Islam bigots who have made careers out of dissecting Islamic textual sources they do not appear to be qualified to interpret?
Media portrayals
Importantly, western entertainment media portrayals also receive unfavourable scholarly evaluations. In the most comprehensive and systematic study of Hollywood movies done to-date, media scholar Jack Shaheen examined 100 years of Hollywood film representations of Arabs and Muslims.
He found that the majority of the 900 films he examined portrayed Arabs and Muslims as “brutal, heartless, uncivilised religious fanatics and money-mad cultural ‘others’ bent on terrorising civilised westerners, especially Christians and Jews”.
No one could reasonably suggest that western news and entertainment media organisations should ignore negative portrayals of Muslims altogether. This would be unreasonable, especially given the importance of global terrorism and the involvement of Muslims in their fair share of negative events.
It is not unreasonable, however, to ask for contextualised accounts, fairer portrayals, critical examinations of the root causes of terrorism, an increase in Muslim voices, and news coverage that does more to separate ordinary Muslims from groups like al-Qaeda and ISIL.
According to the scholarly literature, the patterns of representation are fairly clear. Some fair, balanced news coverage and sympathetic entertainment media portrayals of Muslims notwithstanding, Islam and Muslims are generally portrayed negatively and stereotypically, including in some of the most powerful western media.
At what point do we begin to hold media organisations at least partly accountable for the anti-Muslim sentiment that is gripping many western nations?
Or, more importantly, when will western media organisations hold themselves to account?
Dr Mohamad Elmasry is an assistant professor in the Department of Communications at the University of North Alabama.
Police believe the triple homicide of a Muslim family in their North Carolina home was due to a parking conflict and was likely not religiously motivated. But the victims’ family disagrees, calling it a “hate crime” and an “execution.”
READ MORE: Chapel Hill shooting: 3 Muslims gunned down in N. Carolina
The three young relatives in the college town of Chapel Hill were gunned down in their home on Tuesday evening. The victims in the triple homicide have been identified as Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23; his wife, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21; and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19. All three victims were shot in the head.
A 46-year-old man identified by police as Craig Stephen Hicks turned himself in late Tuesday night. He was subsequently arrested on suspicion of three counts of first degree murder. Hicks lived next door to the family in a condominium complex a few miles east of the University of North Carolina’s flagship campus.
The women’s father, psychiatrist Dr. Mohammad Abu-Salha, told the Raleigh News & Observer that, while parking may have been the catalyst for Tuesday’s events, the shooter had an underlying animosity towards his daughters and son-in-law based on their religion and culture.
“It was execution style, a bullet in every head,” Abu-Salha said Wednesday morning. “This was not a dispute over a parking space; this was a hate crime. This man had picked on my daughter and her husband a couple of times before, and he talked with them with his gun in his belt. And they were uncomfortable with him, but they did not know he would go this far.”
The grieving father said that one of his daughters had told the family a week ago that she had a “hateful neighbor.”
“Honest to God, she said, ‘He hates us for what we are and how we look,’” he said. Both women wore hijabs, the traditional Muslim head scarf.
Hicks is a self-described atheist who regularly posted content critical of religion on his Facebook account.
While police noted Wednesday morning that the killings were likely part of an ongoing parking dispute, they added that they have not ruled out the possibility that it was a religiously motivated attack.
“Our investigators are exploring what could have motivated Mr. Hicks to commit such a senseless and tragic act,” Chapel Hill Police Chief Chris Blue said in a statement. “We understand the concerns about the possibility that this was hate-motivated and we will exhaust every lead to determine if that is the case.”
Durham District Attorney Roger Echols also said that law enforcement has not eliminated any motives at this point.
“All motives will be under investigation,” Echols said, according to WRAL.
Hicks’ wife Karen denied that her husband was motivated by Islamophobia, but rather by the parking situation at the condominium complex.
“This incident had nothing to do with religion or the victims’ faiths,” Hicks’s wife told reporters at a news conference Wednesday afternoon.
She added that the shooting came as a “complete shock” and she expressed her “deepest sympathy and condolences” to the victims’ families, WTVD reported.
Hicks’ attorney also stressed that the family does not believe the shooting was a hate crime.
“It has nothing to do with terrorism. It has nothing to do with anything but the mundane issue of this man being frustrated day in and day out and not being able to park where he wanted to park,” said attorney Rob Maitland. “These victims were there at the wrong time and wrong place.”
Both Karen Hicks and Maitland mentioned mental illness as a factor.
Parking was a recurring issue between Hicks and his three victims, but it never escalated to the point of involving law enforcement, Chapel Hill police told WTVD.
“I talked with the brother of Deah Barakat who was shot, and he told me that allegedly this neighbor had gone into this apartment before, over parking, and this was an issue that they had dealt with in the past,” WUNC’s Reema Khrais reported.
On Tuesday evening, one 911 caller heard eight shots; another reported between five and 10 shots after she heard “kids screaming,” according to released recordings of the calls. Neighbors have described the parking situation as “confusing,” WRAL reported.
While many across social media and in the Muslim-American community called on law enforcement to investigate the incident as a hate crime, local officials sought to calm fears of an outbreak of violence against those who practice Islam.
“The events of yesterday are not part of a targeting campaign against Muslims in North Carolina,” US Attorney Ripley Rand told reporters at a news conference Wednesday afternoon, adding that there is “no information this is part of an organized event against Muslims.”
“This appears, at this point, to be an isolated incident,” Rand said.
The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) called on federal authorities to investigate the slayings and address a “possible bias motive” for them.
READ MORE: #MuslimLivesMatter: Shock and outrage as 3 Muslim students gunned down in N. Carolina
“Based on the brutal nature of this crime, the past anti-religion statements of the alleged perpetrator, the religious attire of two of the victims, and the rising anti-Muslim rhetoric in American society, we urge state and federal law enforcement authorities to quickly address speculation of a possible bias motive in this case,” said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad, according to WTVD.
Currently, federal law authorities are assisting “merely in a monitoring capacity at this point,” Rand said. They are helping process evidence, which is standard in homicide cases, WRAL reported.
Hicks was arraigned Wednesday morning. Durham County Judge Marcia Morey denied bond, and scheduled his next court appearance for March 4. Hicks was originally being kept at the Durham County Jail, but was later moved to the state’s Central Prison. Authorities have not elaborated on why.
Vigils for the victims are planned at UNC and at North Carolina State University, where all three received their undergraduate degrees.
MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA (CT&P) – A group of Alabama state senators backed by religious zealot Judge Roy Moore and unhinged racist congressman Mo Brooks (R-AL) have introduced a bill in the Alabama legislature that would effectively overturn a November ballot initiative that banned Sharia law from being used in Alabama’s court system. The November initiative was passed by an overwhelming majority of 72% of voters.
Senator Gerald Allen (R-Tuscaloosa), the idiot who introduced the original amendment, told the Birmingham News that recent events have caused him to change his mind about the ballot initiative. “The decision by a federal court judge to overturn our ban on gay marriage, and the horrible measles outbreak across our dear country have made me think that we may have been a bit too hasty,” said the imbecile from Tuscaloosa.
“Judge Moore and Representative Brooks have convinced me and several other senators to introduce the ‘Sharia Ain’t So Bad’ bill early next month,” said Allen. “The bill will overturn the ballot initiative and introduce our own version of Sharia into the court system, although our version will be called Chriria, and will be based on the Bible instead of the Quran.”
Judge Moore, famous for his religious zealotry that most Americans thought we left behind in the Middle Ages, set up a series of meetings with the senators when it became apparent that the federal government was going to attempt to drag Alabama kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
“If we allow these fags and lesbians to marry, it will be the end of the world as we know it and God will take back the coal, deer, and other natural resources that he bestowed upon us at the Creation,” said the sexually insecure homophobe.
Representative Mo Brooks joined the fray because he is convinced that the measles outbreak has been caused by illegal dingoes crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. The dingoes in question are said to be seeking political asylum after years of oppression in Australia. The wacked-out right-wing kook is also against abortion in any form and thinks that stem cell research is the work of Satan.
“Chriria law will help us keep subhuman Central American kids and diseased dingoes out of America,” said the bigoted freak from the 5th District. It’ll also help us to keep women where they belong, in the bed or in the kitchen.”
Senator Allen told the Montgomery Advertiser that in the end it was a pretty easy decision to introduce the bill.
“When we all sat down and really thought about it, we decided that we really have a lot in common with those Islamic savages from the 7th century. We both think women are our property, we both think that a nation should be governed by a set of archaic religious laws, and of course we both fear homosexuals and think they should be thrown onto concrete from a great height.”
As of yet there are no polls to indicate how the residents of Alabama will respond to the flip-flop, but most pundits think that as long as the politicians say that the new law is based on the Bible, it will pass without too much trouble.
“You can convince these idiots to pass just about anything if you say that Jesus wants them too,” chuckled Senator Allen.
On another note, Alabama is currently ranked third behind Florida and Texas as the most idiotic state in the Union, but it appears to be rapidly gaining ground.
“In recent years Florida and Texas have really been kicking our ass,” said Alabama Governor Robert Bentley. “But it is my sincere hope that the recent actions of Judge Moore, Representative Brooks, and Senator Allen will boost us back to our rightful position as laughingstock of the entire country.”
Barely a week after receiving a mandate from parliamentary electors to combat the Brussels-driven austerity that has wrecked Greece’s economy and afflicted its population for half a decade, Syriza Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis confirmed his party’s intentions to fight EU oppression by saying he would not negotiate with representatives of Greece’s “hated troika of lenders.”
“We respect institutions but we don’t plan to cooperate with that committee,” Varoufakis said, referring to the auditors who review Greece’s accounting on behalf of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. “Our first action as a government will not be to reject the rationale of questioning this program through a request to extend it.”
Varoufakis, an academic with the University of Athens, had just emerged from a talk in Athens on Friday with Jeroen Dijsselbloem, head of the Eurogroup of EU finance ministers. In a visibly tense press conference alongside Dijsselbloem, Varoufakis added that Greece would not seek an extension to its $270 billion bailout.
“This platform enabled us to win the confidence of the Greek people,” he said.
As The Guardian noted in its report on the conference, Greece has lost more than a quarter of its GDP as a result of budget cuts and tax increases “enforced at the behest of creditors.”
Varoufakis and Greece’s new prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, said their government would deal only with individual institutions and ministers within the EU.
Varoufakis made headlines just before the election when he promised to “destroy the basis upon which they have built, for decade after decade, a system, a network that viciously sucks the energy and economic power from everybody else in society.” He made the statement in replying to a journalist who asked: “What will you do to [Greece’s] oligarchy, concretely?”
For standing his ground against intransigent EU officials indifferent to the suffering of their fellow Europeans, we honor Yanis Varoufakis as our Truthdigger of the Week.
Potential 2016 candidates had better listen up: The majority of American voters don’t just want someone who acknowledges the reality of man-made climate change — they want someone who’s going to do something about it.
That’s the headline finding of a new poll, conducted by the New York Times, Stanford University and nonpartisan environmental research group Resources for the Future. A 78 percent majority of Americans — including 48 percent of Republicans — said they think the federal government should be doing something to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
Even more significantly, two-thirds of the respondents said they’d be more more likely to vote for candidates who campaign on climate action. Again, that included 48 percent of Republicans. The same numbers, more or less, said they’d be less likely to vote for someone who thinks “the science on global warming is a hoax and is an attempt to perpetrate a fraud on the American people.”
- January 27, 2015
- Written by: Kaye Lee
- John F Kennedy once said:“Voters chose us because they have confidence in our discernment, when we are in a position that allows us to determine what best serves their interests as a part of national interests. This means that we – according to the situation – we have to lead, instruct and correct the opinions of voters and sometimes not even consider them, exercising the discernment we were elected for”.
For me to be comfortable with that, which I would love to be, I would need to have confidence that our elected representatives were people of integrity. I would need to feel that they had sufficient intelligence to grasp the issues, that they would listen to expert opinion, that they were honest when speaking to their constituents, and that they had enough courage to protect us from those who would seek to exploit us.
When a politician is elected they are given temporary custodianship of our common wealth. It is a huge responsibility. They will be making decisions about how best to invest the money we entrust to them and how best to grow the country’s assets and raise living standards for all.
Instead of attracting people of integrity, politics in this country, and many others, has become the haven of career politicians whose goal is to secure a comfortable lifestyle for themselves now and into the future.
We elect people to lead, but many have just become followers. They follow a party line, a lobbyist or an ideology. In so doing they are abrogating their responsibility and failing in the job they were elected to do. Every utterance, every decision, is made with the view to being re-elected. Far from being leaders, our politicians follow polls and focus groups searching for what will make them popular.
What other job can you get with a starting salary package of hundreds of thousands of dollars with no qualifications, no experience, no essential criteria, no application other than saying you are eligible (and you don’t even have to prove that), no interview other than by the media, and no ongoing performance assessment other than an election in three years’ time whose outcome has been decided by Rupert Murdoch?
The required paperwork to apply for welfare, to open a bank account, or to get a driver’s licence is much tougher than to run for Parliament.
It has been said that if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. Our method of paying huge wages and entitlements has attracted gorillas – those who have, from a young age, worked out how to milk the most they can from their mediocrity.
Look at Tim Wilson – appointed by George Brandis after an enjoyable evening spent together at an IPA bash where Tony Abbott lauded Rupert Murdoch as one of the finest Australians in history. Lo and behold, as soon as George gets the power he kicks out our Commissioner for the Disabled and employs Tim at a salary package approaching $400,000 – no application, no interview.
Previously Tim had been for seven years policy director of the Institute of Public Affairs during which time he vociferously called for the abolition of the Human Rights Council.
One can only imagine the phone call.
“The HRC…that hotbed of leftie tree huggers? No way! They should all be sacked to save we taxpayers….huh…what’s that you say? Are you sure you can get me a gig? How much does it pay? Ok…I am sure I can whip them into line. You do your bit by undermining Gillian Triggs in every way you can and I am sure I will be able to take over when you force her to resign. I was a real force in the Young Liberals….I can make this thing work. Ummm…I don’t want to appear pushy but what entitlements do I get and I’ll need school holidays off”.
On appointment to the HRC, Wilson resigned from membership of the Liberal Party. Look, no more conflict of interest … now what are we working on again, George?
He has been arguing for Section 18C of the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act to be revoked, calling the prosecution of broadcaster Andrew Bolt (who, I might add, was the MC for the IPA bash) for vilification of indigenous Australians an infringement on Bolt’s right to freedom of speech. After finding himself with nothing to do after the government responded to the public outcry to dump the changes, Tim briefly resurrected himself after the shootings in Paris. He seems to have faded away again no doubt enjoying his backdated pay rise over the holiday period.
When the Prime Minister sets the example by keeping his colleagues waiting for an hour while he gets his photo taken so he can claim entitlements for attending a private function, and has the gall to admit to it like there is no problem with that, one can see the total disdain he has for propriety and that Tony is very much in it for the money. Let’s face it, his career before entering politics was hardly stellar and it is rather hard to imagine what he could be successful at other than being Howard’s attack dog.
The blatant cronyism, the rewarding of donors, the hiring of climate sceptics to advise about everything, the dogged determination to unwind all reforms introduced by the previous government, the exploiting of entitlements, the silencing of advocacy groups whilst allowing paid access to ministers by lobby groups and rich individuals, the backing away from tax reform measures (FBT on novated leases, taxing super payouts over $100,000pa, tightening corporate tax evasion profit sharing loopholes, mining tax, carbon pricing), selling off our assets, unfettered mining with no regard for the environment – all of these things are proof of how the Abbott government considers our common wealth theirs to do with as they will.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (CT&P) – Sources close to Senator James Inhofe are telling the Washington Post that the politician from Oklahoma is so stupid that he cannot find his ass even when he utilizes both hands.
“The man is as dumb as a box of rocks,” said an aide to the senator, on the condition that he remain anonymous. “He has roughly the same IQ as a tapir running around in a South American rain forest. I’m relatively new to the staff, so I don’t know how long he’s been like this, but let me tell you, the man has trouble crossing the fucking street by himself. It’s a classic case of ‘lights on-nobody home.’”
The revelation is all the more alarming because as a result of the November elections Senator Inhofe has assumed the chairmanship of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
“It’s like making Barney Fife secretary of defense,” said Dr. Frank Black of the Banzai Institute in Holland Township, New Jersey. “This guy actually believes that the Bible somehow refutes man-made climate change. He’s as bad as those savages in the Middle East that want to take us back to the 7th Century. He belongs in a mental institution or a third grade science class or anywhere other than the U.S. Senate. The man is a menace.”
Senator Inhofe has become famous for his idiotic statements in the past, such as the time he compared the rise of gay rights to the sinking of the Titanic. Most Americans have up to this point considered him another Tea Party type clown with the native intelligence of cement block, but many are now alarmed that he is chairman of an important committee.
Inhofe’s first act as committee chairman was to take the floor and drone on and on about how anthropologic climate change is a giant hoax perpetrated by scientists who just want funding to continue their lavish lifestyles.
“Man made climate change is just a giant conspiracy like the moon landings and the JFK assassination,” said Inhofe. “We can’t trust these scientists at all, they’re just like doctors. Everyone knows it’s better to pray to God to be healed rather than see a doctor,” raved the moron from Oklahoma.
The senator used a video made in his garage to support his arguments. The video began with a list of people who don’t agree with the vast majority of climate scientists who say human-caused carbon emissions are contributing to climate change. Inhofe said he has compiled a list of 4,000 “renowned scientists” who disagree with the 97% of climate scientists who actually have looked at the data. Inhofe’s list actually has 650 people-not 4,000, and some of whom are television meteorologists, amateur gynecologists, pizza delivery dudes, and fry cooks at McDonalds.
Conversely, one of the most recent peer-reviewed studies on the state of climate science showed that out of 4000 abstracts from peer-reviewed papers published in the past 21 years that stated a position on the cause of global warming — 97 percent of these endorsed the point that it was human-caused.
In the video, Inhofe says this is “just not true.” “Whoever heard of someone reviewing a paper on a pier?” said Inhofe. “Piers are for fishing.”
“With people as dumb as Inhofe in positions of power in the federal government, well, things don’t bode well for any meaningful action on climate change for at least the next two years,” said Dr. Black. “It really cements the image of the U.S. Senate as being ‘old, white, male, and stupid.’ One thing about it though, with guys like this and those idiots in the Tea Party on television every week, the Democrats are sure to do well in 2016.”
Whenever an act of horrific terror enrages the West, a predictable second act ensues. Furious commentators and activists on the right erupt with blanket denunciations of Islam, Muslims and their supposed plots to enslave us all under Shariah, urging that we ban the religion, stigmatize its faithful and restore the Judeo-Christian exclusivity of America. Sometimes a few even seek retribution in attacks on mosques, individual Muslims and anyone unfortunate enough to “look Muslim.”
Violent or merely loud, these are the useful idiots whose divisive blundering underscores the propaganda of al-Qaida, the Islamic State group and imitators around the world. They represent precisely the opposite of what we must do and say if we are to defeat Islamist extremism in all its manifestations.
Look behind the delusional murderers who actually carry out such crimes as the massacres at Charlie Hebdo and the Paris kosher market. What is their strategic objective? Not a military victory over the French army or even an atmosphere of fear in Paris. They seek to provoke a harsh crackdown on innocent Muslims, especially the young and unemployed, along with expressions of bigotry and discrimination—to highlight the simmering communal conflicts they hope to inflame into a “war of civilizations.”
So the extremists can only be grateful when anti-Muslim propaganda, repeated constantly in right-wing publications and broadcasts, casts them as the defenders of Islam rather than its defilers. Every time Islam is publicly defined as a religion of violence, the jihadis gain prestige. Their appeals become more persuasive to oppressed young Muslims—especially if no alternative is apparent.
Yet the narrative of endless conflict and implacable distrust is not only untrue—as we saw last week when Parisians of all faiths rallied together—but deeply destructive to traditional democratic values and strategically stupid.
Yes, we must protect the right to speak freely, including when the speech is offensive to religions and even to ethnic groups, without fear of violent responses. We must also protect the rights of religious and ethnic minorities—including the right to protest peacefully against offensive speech. That requires swift action against those who will conspire to maim, murder and terrorize—and the capacity, whenever possible, to neutralize those criminals before they act.
But Americans will need to do much more than surround ourselves with police, armies and intelligence services if we ever hope to overcome our extremist enemies. Effective counterterrorism demands a contrasting narrative of coexistence, respect, fairness and opportunity.
The elements of that political arsenal exist already—in the stories of Ahmed Merabet, the Muslim policeman who died heroically in Paris, and Lassana Bathily, the young Muslim employee who led Jews in the kosher market to safety; in the undeniable fact that the extremists murder hundreds of innocent civilians, overwhelmingly Muslim, every week; and in the secure, prosperous existence that millions of ordinary Muslim families have enjoyed in this country for decades, despite outbursts of prejudice and harassment.
We ought to note with pride that Muslims serve in the U.S. military and every branch of government, including two members of Congress, because the Constitution specifically bans any religious test for public office. (Certain figures on the religious right may need to be reminded, too.) Muslims should know that their holy days are routinely celebrated in the White House by presidents of both parties—even as all religions are subject to disbelief, criticism and even jeering satire in a free society.
The consensus among ordinary Muslims is well-known to pollsters of public opinion: By large majorities, here and abroad, they fear and disdain the violent extremists who have defamed their religion. Let’s at least stop trying to change their minds.
I am wondering how Andrew Bolt is feeling with the release of a trio of new studies in two days which confirm how bad the earth’s fever is.
In November 2013 Bolt wrote an article titled “Fighting the global warming religion”.
He stated that “Atmospheric temperatures have remained flat for at least 15 years.”
The following graph shows the tricks used by deniers like Bolt who pick their data to suit their argument.
Aside from the usual tactics of choosing a very hot year as your starting point, and using a short time period rather than observing long term trends, a report from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) confirmed that 2014 was the hottest year ever since reliable records started being kept in 1880—and the results weren’t even close.
Average global surface temperature worldwide was 14.58º C—surpassing previous records set in 2005 and 2007—and making 2014 1.1º C hotter than the average for the entire 20th century. And before you say 1.1º C doesn’t seem like much, think about whether you’d prefer to run a fever of 38º or 40º. The planet is every bit as sensitive to small variations as you are.
Bolt also says “there has been an unexpected pause in warming of the atmosphere, with the IPCC blaming the deep ocean for hiding the missing heat where it can’t easily be found. We’ve seen about 0.85 degrees of warming over the past 130 years (which hasn’t seemed to hurt, I think). That warming slowed dramatically over the past 15 years – to just 0.05 a decade, or virtually zero.”
According to the journal Science, marine life forms are growing sicker, with a “major extinction event” a very real possibility. All through the oceans, the signs of ecosystem breakdown are evident: the death of coral reefs, the collapse of fish stocks, the migration of species from waters that have grown too warm for them to the patches that remain cool enough.
On sea level rises, Bolt says “so far we’ve probably had just 19cms in 110 years. Turns out the median sea level rises tipped under the four IPCC scenarios for 2100 are between just 26cms and 30cms, with a very upper limit of 82cms under the most alarming scenario.”
A study in Nature looked at sea level rise in both the periods from 1901 to 1990 and from 1993 to 2010. It found that sea levels had risen more slowly than believed in the 90 years that followed 1900, and much faster in the 17 years from 1993 to 2010—close to three times as fast per year from 1.2 (+/- 0.2) mm/year to 3.0 (+/-0.7) mm/year.
Whilst this may not seem like a lot, a single centimetre of water globally is a lot of water. (in non-metric terms a single inch of water spread around all of the planet’s oceans and seas represents two quadrillion gallons of water.) The recent faster rate of rising may also affect predictions for the future.
Bolt also disputes the warning that a rapidly warming climate could affect the quality and quantity of available food.
“Sheer alarmism. Fact is that extra carbon dioxide means more plant food, and moderate warming means more rain overall. That, plus advances in gene technology and agricultural practices, have lead to record global harvests of food crops.”
That’s the trouble when you get your scientific information from the Heartland Institute’s favourite ex-TV weatherman, Andrew Watts. Deniers spend a lot of money to cherrypick data, quote it out of context, and produce misleading graphics. Whilst production might be higher in gross tonnage, he ignores demand and yield.
The IPCC report published last year said that the rate of increase in crop yields is slowing – especially in wheat – raising doubts as to whether food production will keep up with the demand of a growing population.
Wheat is the first big staple crop to be affected by climate change, because it is sensitive to heat and is grown around the world, from Pakistan to Russia to Canada. Projections suggest that wheat yields could drop 2% a decade.
The report explored a range of scenarios involving a temperature rise of two degrees or more that saw dramatic declines in production in the coming decades. Declines in crop yields will register first in drier and warmer parts of the world but as temperatures rise two, three or four degrees, they will affect everyone.
In the more extreme scenarios, heat and water stress could reduce yields by 25% between 2030 and 2049.
The report acknowledged that there were a few isolated areas where a longer growing season had been good for farming. But it played down the idea that there may be advantages to climate change as far as food production is concerned.
Overall, the report said, “Negative impacts of climate change on crop yields have been more common than positive impacts.” Scientists and campaigners pointed to the finding as a defining feature of the report.
Other food sources are also under threat. Fish catches in some areas of the tropics are projected to fall by between 40% and 60%, according to the report.
The report also connected climate change to rising food prices and political instability, for instance the riots in Asia and Africa after food price shocks in 2008.
Bolt’s articles should come with a disclaimer: “Any resemblance to responsible factual reporting is purely coincidental.”
French comedian Dieudonné has just been charged as an ‘apologist for terrorism’ for his Facebook posting ‘Je me sens Charlie Coulibaly’ (I feel I am Charlie Coulibaly)
Recent commentary about the so-called “French” idea of free speech is fuelling confusion and misinformation in the debate about Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 in Australia.
Human Rights Commissioner Tim Wilson has said that a publication like French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, target of last week’s terrorist attack, would be “shut down” in Australia under Section 18C. New South Wales Solicitor-General Michael Sexton has written that:
… those who say they are Charlie should support changes to 18C.
Wilson and Sexton join the likes of News Corp columnist Andrew Bolt and Liberal senator Cory Bernardi, who have similarly argued that publications such as Hebdo wouldn’t be permitted because of Section 18C.
There is at least some truth to these claims. A publication like Charlie Hebdo wouldn’t survive in Australia – not because of 18C – but because two major corporations dominate our mainstream media. We simply don’t have the same plurality of the press as they do in France. Anyone who has travelled in France would know of the diversity of French print media – with an impressive total of some 15,000 titles – which operates largely thanks to generous government subsidies.
France is tougher on hate speech
As for Section 18C, hate speech is subject to much stricter regulations in France (under both civil and criminal law) than in Australia.
In July last year, for example, Front National politician Anne-Sophie Leclère was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment and fined 50,000 euros for comparing Attorney-General Christiane Taubira (who is black) to a monkey on her Facebook page. The criminal penalties imposed on Leclère seemed to pass without uproar or outrage. What did arouse public debate for going “too far” was the court’s decision to impose an additional fine of 30,000 euros on Front National.
Recall also French comedian Dieudonné, whose shows were banned last year because of his controversial quenelle gesture (an upside-down Nazi salute). His latest arrest came just 48 hours after the massive march in Paris in support of freedom of expression. His Facebook post, “Tonight, as far as I’m concerned, I feel like Charlie Coulibaly” – linking one of the Charlie Hebdo killers to the tribute “Je suis Charlie” – reportedly prompted the charge of being an “apologist for terrorism”.
Dieudonné has been the subject of numerous court proceedings. In February 2014, a French judge found him guilty of incitement of ethnic or racial hatred and denial of crimes against humanity over videos on his YouTube account. In October 2009, Dieudonné was fined 10,000 euros for “public insult of people of Jewish faith or origin”. The following year he was again forced to pay 10,000 euros, after the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism brought defamation proceedings. In February 2007, a French court found his remarks in an interview printed in Lyon Capitale to be offensive and hence a necessary restriction on the freedom of speech.
It is worth noting that these were criminal penalties, not civil as with Section 18C. The point is that the portrayal of the French legal system put forward by some conservative commentators is simplistic and misleading. So too is the portrayal of Section 18C as draconian.
Australian lacks strong right to free speech
In France, freedom of expression has been protected since the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citzen of 1789. Also, as in other liberal democracies, the right to free speech is not absolute, but must be balanced against other competing rights with reference to the circumstances of each case. Hence the Law on the Freedom of the Press of 29 July 1981, which offers protections from racist and defamatory declarations, anti-terrorism legislation, Holocaust denial and insult and incitement to discrimination, hate or violence against individuals.
Charlie Hebdo itself has a chequered history of legal proceedings. French media report nearly 50 court cases, or one every six months. These include criminal proceedings brought in 2007 against then editor Philippe Val by the Grand Mosque of Paris. Val was acquitted. As in this 2007 court case, Charlie Hebdo won the majority of these decisions not due to freedom of speech tout court, but thanks to the protections on caricature, droit a la caricature.
It is also worth recalling that the case that fuelled opposition to Section 18C, Eatock v. Bolt, concerned printed articles – not cartoons or caricature. Section 18D of the Racial Discrimination Act includes various exceptions, including for fair comment, artistic work and performance. In the Bolt case, the judge found against fair comment in the public interest because the articles contained significant factual errors.
Australia, unlike France and other democracies, has only an implied right to freedom of speech on political affairs in the constitution. Those with genuine concerns about lack of free speech protections in Australia would do better to campaign for a bill of rights rather than pursue misdirected battles against Section 18C.
When the anti-18C campaign does not extend to other legislated restrictions – for example, section 578C of the Crimes Act, which includes publication of offensive or indecent articles, or section 35P of the ASIO Act – there is good reason to be cynical. When couched in terms of one’s “right to be a bigot”, even more so.
Context and facts are missing from debate
What conservative commentators don’t seem to understand is that they are not Charlie Hebdo; such a comparison is laughable. It is a satirical left-wing magazine that makes fun of all religions, political parties and themselves.
More importantly, Charlie Hebdo is part of France’s rich comic culture. Accordingly, its articles and cartoons must be understood in terms of parody, satire and, above all, with reference to political and cultural context.
This last point seems to have been missed entirely in the debate on Charlie Hebdo in Australia. Other things that are missing include reference to actual legislation and court proceedings.
A debate on reforming Section 18C should be informed by research and reason, not ideological cheap shots.
Jonathan Holmes is a Fairfax columnist and former presenter of Media Watch.
For better or for worse, most Australians are not Charlie Hebdo
Some issues aren’t complicated. They are simple black and white. The murder of 17 French innocents, 10 of them simply for being involved in a publication that ridiculed Islam, is an outrage. It should be condemned. Je suis Charlie.
But is it so simple? The Andrew Bolt doesn’t think so. We Australians are NOT , he declares, because we don’t have the guts: “This fearless magazine dared to mock Islam in the way the left routinely mocks Christianity. Unlike much of our ruling class, it refused to sell out our freedom to speak.”
Bolt omits to point out that the murdered editors and cartoonists of were quintessential lefties themselves, who mocked and lampooned the French state and the Roman church with every bit as much gusto as they ridiculed Islam.
Attorney-General George Brandis.
But Bolt is certainly right that most Australians have shown quite recently that they don’t share Charlie Hebdo’s uncompromising views on freedom of speech.
It is unlawful in Australia to do anything in public – including the publishing of articles and cartoons – that is “reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or group”, if “the act is done because of the race, colour, or national or ethnic origin” of that person or group.
There are exemptions to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act for the publication of fair comment on a matter of public interest, published “reasonably and in good faith”. But as Bolt discovered when Justice Mordecai Bromberg found him in breach of the act, whether an article is covered by that exemption depends not just on its accuracy, but on whether “… (in)sufficient care and diligence was taken to minimise the offence, insult, humiliation and intimidation suffered by the people likely to be affected …”
Bolt had not taken enough care, Justice Bromberg found, and not just because he had been inexcusably sloppy with his facts. “The derisive tone, the provocative and inflammatory language and the inclusion of gratuitous asides” in the articles complained of satisfied him that “Mr Bolt’s conduct lacked objective good faith”.
But I was one of those who agreed with Bolt that to make it unlawful merely to offend someone, on any grounds, is an assault on freedom of speech. I found Justice Bromberg’s judgment disturbing, and initially I supported the Abbott government’s determination to revise the act.
When Attorney-General George Brandis published his proposed revision, I changed my mind – it seemed to me that it went absurdly far in the opposite direction. (By contrast, I have no problem with the much simpler bill on the table, sponsored by Senator Bob Day and others.)
But most submissions on the government’s draft bill went further. Any revision to the act was opposed by almost every influential ethnic group; every lawyers’ organisation in the land; the entire human rights and social welfare establishment; and by Jewish, Christian and Muslim organisations. Seldom has a proposed legislative reform met such universal condemnation.
In the face of that chorus of disapprobation, and to Bolt’s disgust, the government backed down, and the act stands.
Now, of course, the federal Racial Discrimination Act does not apply to acts that concern a person’s religion – though the Victorian Racial and Religious Tolerance Act does.
Nevertheless, the very Australians who are most likely to be out on the streets today with their “Je suis Charlie” placards made it clear less than a year ago that in their view, at least so far as race is concerned, publications should not be free to give offence or to insult.
Let’s be clear: Charlie Hebdo set out, every week, with the greatest deliberation, to offend and insult all kinds of people, and especially in recent years the followers of Islam, whether fundamentalist or not.
Look at some of the magazine’s recent covers: An Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood protester in a hail of gunfire crying “The Koran is shit – it doesn’t stop bullets”; a full-on homosexual kiss between a Charlie cartoonist and a Muslim sheik with the ironic headline “Love is stronger than hate”; a naked woman with a niqab thrust up her backside.
Most of those who were so outraged by Bolt’s columns about fair-skinned Aboriginal people, and supported the use of the law against him, would find themselves equally appalled by much of Charlie Hebdo’s output. Even though the late Stephane Charbonnier, the magazine’s editor, inhabited the opposite end of the political spectrum, he shared Bolt’s determination to shock the chattering classes.
But whereas Bolt is an unashamed supporter of the Abbott government, Charlie Hebdo mocks all governments. If it were published in Melbourne rather than Paris, the magazine would be scathing about Australia’s new anti-terrorist laws, under which the government can guard all of its secrets from scrutiny and threaten any who reveal them with five years in prison, but we can keep none of ours from the government.
Yet the new laws have been greeted with tepid acceptance by most Australians. In protesting their over-reach, the media have been largely on their own. In this respect, too, nous ne sommes pas Charlie.
Perhaps that’s not surprising, when so many commentators are prepared to wind up the scary rhetoric. “A de facto world war is under way, and it has everything to do with Islam,” declared Fairfax’s Paul Sheehan on Monday.
That the murder of Charlie Hebdo’s staff was a hideous crime is beyond debate. It should be treated as such. But talk of world war brings with it a grave risk: that it will legitimise the remorseless encroachment by government on our liberties.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend, the saying goes. But the enemies of Islamic fundamentalism are not necessarily the friends of free speech.
For better or for worse, most Australians ne sont pas Charlie. It’s not such a black and white issue, after all.
My first thought on hearing the news of the hostage situation in Sydney’s Martin Place this morning was ‘those poor, terrified people and their anxious families. What a horrible thing to happen!’ and then slightly irrationally (because fear can be irrational), I thought ‘and just before Christmas too’ as if this made the horribleness of the situation more horrible. The next thought I had was condolence to the Islamic population of Sydney and Australia who will, no doubt, be frightened by this situation not just because of the randomness of such an event happening in our peaceful country, but because they know, like they found out after September 11, that their communities will be blamed, hated, abused, discriminated against and generally shunned by large sections of the non-Islamic Australian community through no fault of their own. Perhaps they’re not just scared. If I were them, I would be furious.
I was a teenager when the Port Arthur massacre happened, and I don’t recall there being a backlash at the time against white people with blonde hair. I’m a white person with blonde hair, and no one has ever heaped me into the ‘possibly a mass murderer’ bucket along with Martin Bryant. Or more recently, Norwegian Anders Breivik, who apparently killed 69 young political activists because he didn’t like their party’s immigration stance which he saw as too open to Islamic immigrants. In fact, in neither case do I recall the word ‘terrorist’ even being used to describe the mass murders of innocent people.
As soon as I saw the images of the white Islamic text on a black flag in the window of the Lindt Café on the news this morning, I knew Australian bigots would be singing with the cries of ‘I told you so!’ and I was right. According to The Guardian’s commentary of today’s events, King Bigot, Ralph Cerminara, leader of the anti-Muslim organisation Australian Defence League, hurried down to Martin Place to rant about Muslims and was moved on by police. Charming stuff. But of course Ralph is not alone. I noticed Greens MP Adam Bandt received a series of bigoted responses to this tweet:
Here are 5 of the first 6 responses on the twitter feed:
It’s important to note, not that Murdoch’s Daily Telegraph cares to be accurate, that the flag photographed in the window of the café is not an Islamic State flag. We don’t know anything at all about the hostage takers yet, they may be Islamic State supporters, they may not. But Murdoch’s newspapers, and the bigots who take this news as truth won’t let unconfirmed facts get in the way of a good excuse for some old-fashioned fear mongering and racist bigotry.
This ‘how-much-profit-can-we-drag-out-of-this-tragedy-that-we-know-barely-anything-about’ afternoon edition Daily Telegraph front cover makes the very dubious statement of ‘THE INSTANT WE CHANGED FOREVER’. But have we changed?
The only thing that I can see as having changed in this situation is the level of comfort bigots feel about being openly racist towards people of Islamic faith. And that’s the very real, very scary, very confronting part of this tragedy. Not just that this shocking, violent siege can happen to innocent people on a quiet Monday morning a week before Christmas. The tweets to Adam Bandt show a side of Australia that we all know is there, but we prefer not to think about. These bigots are the reason asylum seeker policy is such a political hot potato in this country, and why Tony Abbott is able to be elected promising to ‘stop the boats’. These nasty racist people aren’t a rarity. And they vote. Welcome to Australia. We haven’t changed a bit.
olddogthoughts 
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