Bullshit

Passing Bull 42 – Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Refugees and Us

/ Geoffrey Gibson / 1 Comment

 

Many people outside Australia want to come to it because they are threatened or oppressed in their own country.  They are prepared to risk death to do so.  We say that their attempts to come here are illegal – unless they can afford to fly – and we use our navy to stop them.  We then justify our stopping them by saying that we have saved them from the risks of the voyage.  We are doing these people a favour.  Then we lock them up in lands that are brutal or corrupt or both.  We employ private institutions to do our SS work.  And we wait for the refugees to start burning themselves to death.

Have I missed something or is this why I will be again reminded in Cambridge that Australians are pariahs in Europe?  This is not just bullshit.  It is not just an offence against the mind.  The offence is against humanity.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer made the following remarks at the beginning of 1943 after he had been many years in a Nazi jail.  They look to me to apply to Australia word for word in its attitudes to refugees in 2016.  Has ever such a rich country been so utterly mean?

There is a very real danger of our drifting into an attitude of contempt for humanity.  We know quite well that we have no right to do so, and that it would lead us into the most sterile relation to our fellow men.  The following thoughts may keep us from such a temptation.  It means that we at once fall into the worst of blunders of our opponents.  The man who despises another will never be able to make anything of him.  Nothing that we despise in the other man is entirely absent from ourselves.  We often expect from others more than we are willing to do ourselves.  Why have we hitherto thought so intemperately about man and his frailty and temptability?  We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer…..

We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretense; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical.  Are we still of any use?  What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straightforward men.  Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remorseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness?

When I look with disgust on the sloganeering dope and the dull thug who have been in charge of this cruelty to people worse off than us, I am deeply ashamed of my own complicity.  What is the difference between me and the citizen of Munich who preferred to look the other way when Dachau was mentioned?

Poet of the Month: A D Hope

The Pleasure of Princes

What pleasures have great princes?  These: to know

Themselves reputed mad with pride or power;

To speak few words – few words and short bring low

This ancient house, that city with flame devour;

 

To make old men, their father’s enemies,

Drunk on the vintage of the former age;

To have great painters show their mistresses

Naked to the succeeding time; engage

 

The cunning of able, treacherous ministers

To serve, despite themselves, the cause they hate,

And leave a prosperous kingdom to their heirs

Nursed by the caterpillars of the state;

 

To keep their spies in good men’s hearts: to read

The malice of the wise, and act betimes;

To hear the Grand Remonstrances of greed,

Led by the pure; cheat justice of her crimes;

 

To beget worthless sons and, being old,

By starlight climb the battlements, and while

The pacing century hugs himself for cold,

Keep vigil like a lover, muse and smile,

 

And to think, to see from the grim castle steep

The midnight city below rejoice and shine:

‘There my great demon grumbles in his sleep

And dreams of his destruction, and of mine.’

Why is Telstra so cruel? Another capitalist nightmare

/ Geoffrey Gibson / 5 Comments

 

I am writing this on my third attempt to tell Telstra that their service has failed yet again.  I am without email or the internet.  I tried late last night but after twenty minutes the connection – with Telstra – just failed.  I tried again at 6.30 this morning.  The computer said that the wait time was fourteen minutes.  After forty three I had to give up to keep an appointment.  This time, the third, the computer said that the wait time was more than twenty minutes.  At least the computer has given up lying.  It is more honest than the dreadful bastards who run this rogue outfit.  Telstra has succeeded in being ruder to its customers than Qantas.  That is a fearful indictment.

As the butcher at Castlemaine said, if we ran a business like this, we would not have a business.  It is not just a business matter – decent people would not inflict this kind of vulgarity if not cruelty on other people because that kind of conduct is just plain immoral.

How are Telstra permitted to get away with a cruel indifference to people that reminds me so much of the cruel indifference that Communist regimes show to their people?  The only answer I can think of is that they have inherited a virtual monopoly that enables them to do what they like.  And overpay themselves massively.  They are the archetypal 800 pound gorilla.

Those dreadful galahs that pose as directors of this rogue outfit, and line their pockets as they go, should be required to make at least one of these calls a day.  They would then cure themselves of their own criminality within a week.

You have to wonder what it is about Australia that allows us to breed and raise people who are prepared to be so rude and cruel to other Australians.  Our love affair with mediocrity is one thing – but this is downright bastardry.  And what happens to people who have to be able to rely on these crooks to run their own business – as I do?  Must we all just get sucked down into their gutter?

And now here is the worst part.  I own shares in these bastards – I therefore get ripped off at both ends.

If you ever get to read this note, normal service will have been restored.  This call – the third – is past twenty minutes and climbing.  If we stay on the graph, it could be well over an hour – or I may just be despatched to oblivion.

Why ever did we give up those decent honest people at the PMG?  At least then we could complain to our local member.

PS After about thirty minutes, I got through on the third attempt.  I will not reflect on the man who sounded a long way away – gone are the days when NBN calls were taken at Townsville – for fear of reprisals, but he said a technician would have to call.  I explained I needed to be connected urgently for business reasons, and after another unconscionably long delay, he said that a technician would arrive this afternoon in a four hour window.  He would ring first.

Well, how silly would you have to be to believe anything these bludgers said?  I had mentioned to my overseas consultant, whose English was as shaky as his grasp of technology, that there had been grievous delays in my getting help.  He apologised and gave me a reference number to quote and said that he would enable me to duck the queue if I needed any more help.  My heart sank a bit when he said he would email me – my inability to get emails was the reason I was speaking to him. That might give rise to what some might call an ontological dilemma, or existential quandary.  We agreed that SMS might be more efficacious.  Things were looking up.

In fairness to Telstra, they rang at 4.25 – 35 minutes before the window closed – to say that because this was the weekend, they would not be able to get someone to me today, but would I like to see one tonight or Monday?  I explained that I had just fixed the problem.

How had I pulled that miracle off?  I recalled that I had made a note in my little black telephone book of a technique taught to me, I think, by the people in Townsville.  Even idiots like me start by switching everything off.  They had told me, as I found I had noted, to switch off the NBN connection at the wall, turn it back on, then insert a pin into the reset access point at the rear of the modem until all of the lights go out – and then go to your knees and pray.  Fervently.  I did that and – Lo!  After some Hithcockian sputtering, it spun into life, and I was back in touch with the world!

It would of course be silly to suggest that that simple advice should have been given to me shortly into my first call by someone whose tone commands confidence.  No – first the mug buyer has to endure another nightmare.  Alternatively, why as a shareholder should I have to foot the bill for a technician to call after hours when the problem could and should have been dealt with on the phone within ten minutes of my picking it up?

Perhaps we might set up a charitable refuge –

REFUGEES FROM TELSTRA.

Passing Bull 41 – Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Folly, Donald Trump, and not a few locals

/ Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

 

My compliments to the Commissioner of the NYPD who commented on the call by Senator Cruz ‘to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighbourhoods.’  The Commissioner said: ‘We don’t need a President that doesn’t respect the values that form the foundation of this country.  There are more than 900 Muslim offices in the NYPD, many of whom also serve in the US military in combat – something that Cruz has never done.’  That is what I expect from New York’s finest – giving the bird to a bumptious Texan senator.

Well, Cruz has gone, tearily enough for a Strong Man, unloved by most, and loathed by those that knew him best in his own party.  If Trump revolts most people, Cruz frightens those best placed to assess him.

The apparent accession of Donald Trump to the position of nominee for the Presidency of the United States will do irreparable damage to the standing of that nation.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer spent many years in Nazi jails before the Nazis hanged him just before the end of the war.  He was a man of ferocious moral courage and an intellect to match that spirit.  In a series of notes headed ‘After Ten Years’ made for New Year in 1943, Bonhoeffer made observations about the state of the nation of Germany – at the beginning of 1943 – and himself.  In the part headed ‘Of folly’, Bonhoeffer made observations that apply word for word to Donald Trump.

‘Folly is a more dangerous enemy to the good than evil.  One can protest against evil; it can be unmasked and, if need be, prevented by force.  Evil always carries the seeds of its own destruction, as it makes people, at the least, uncomfortable.  Against folly we have no defence.  Neither protest nor force can touch it; reasoning is no use; facts that contradict personal prejudices can simply be disbelieved – indeed, the fool can counter by criticising them, and if they are undeniable, they can just be pushed aside as trivial exceptions.  So the fool, as distinct from the scoundrel, is completely self-satisfied; in fact, he can easily become dangerous, as it does not take much to make him aggressive.  A fool must therefore be treated more cautiously than a scoundrel; we shall never again try to convince a fool by reason, for it is both useless and dangerous.

If we are to deal adequately with folly, we must try to understand its nature.  This much is certain, that it is a moral rather than an intellectual defect.  There are people who are mentally agile but foolish, and people who are mentally slow but very far from foolish – a discovery that we make to our surprise as a result of particular situations.  We thus get the impression that folly is likely to be, not a congenital defect, but one that is acquired in certain circumstances where people make fools of themselves or allow others to make fools of them.  We notice further that this defect is less common in the unsociable and solitary than in individuals or groups that are inclined or condemned to sociability.  It seems, then, that folly is a sociological rather than a psychological problem, and that it is a special form of the operation of historical circumstances on people, a psychological by-product of definite external factors.  If we look more closely, we see that any violent display of power, whether political or religious, produces an outburst of folly in a large part of mankind; indeed, this seems actually to be a psychological and sociological law: the power of some needs the folly of the others.  It is not that certain human capacities, intellectual capacity for instance, become stunted or destroyed, but rather that the upsurge of power makes such an overwhelming impression that men are deprived of their independent judgement, and – more or less unconsciously – give up trying to assess the new state of affairs for themselves.  The fact that the fool is often stubborn must not mislead us into thinking that he is independent.  One feels in fact when talking to him, that one is dealing, not with the man himself, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like, which have taken hold of him.  He is under a spell, he is blinded, his very nature is being misused and exploited.  Having thus become a passive instrument, the fool will be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil.  Here lies the danger of a diabolical exploitation that can do irreparable damage to human beings.’

Dietrich Bonhoeffer had the authority to make those observations, and we have the obligation to listen to them, because he was a man of spellbinding courage and he paid for it very dearly.  On the day that Hitler became Chancellor, Bonhoeffer gave a public address about the dangers of false leaders.  The Gestapo turned off the sound.  Bonhoeffer, a man of God, gave his life to resisting a false leader.

Poet of the month: A D Hope

Easter Hymn

Make no mistake; there will be no forgiveness;

No voice can harm you and no hand will save;

Fenced by the magic of deliberate darkness

You walk on the sharp edges of the wave;

 

Trouble with soul again the putrefaction

Where Lazarus three days rotten lies content.

Your human tears will be the seed of faction,

Murder the sequel to your sacrament.

 

The City of God is built like other cities:

Judas negotiates the loans you float;

You will meet Caiaphas upon committees;

You will be glad of Pilate’s casting vote.

 

Your truest lovers still the foolish virgins,

Your heart will sicken at the marriage feasts

Knowing they watch you from the darkened gardens

Being polite to your official guests.

Passing Bull 40 – Bullshit in footy

/ Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

 

When I was a kid, I tried to play Australian rules footy.  It is too hard a game for kids – either form of rugby or soccer is much easier for kids to play.  If you look at kids trying to play our footy, you will see about three of them who know where the ball is, and the others just make up the numbers.  I was one of the ‘others’.

But I could follow an instruction that people would move up one position from the forward pocket or the back pocket to the half forward flank or halfback flank who would then move to the wing depending on whether the ball had gone into attack or defence.  I could follow that; it seemed a good and simple plan; but it was probably academic for me because of what I have just mentioned about only three boys getting near where the action really was.

Is it pure arrogance on my part to think that other people may have difficulty in implementing more involved plans?  I don’t think so.  I wouldn’t try something more clever on with lawyers.  It has long seemed to me that commentators try to read far too much into games of our footy.  I have long suspected that all this talk about structures and game-plans and the like is mainly bullshit.  As are the convoluted stats.  They are as reliable as economists.

Although I spend at least as much time watching two of the other codes as I do watching the AFL, my suspicion about the role of bullshit in AFL footy has firmed up with the sharp decline of three or four sides in the games played so far this year.  I refer in particular to the collapse – because that is what it has been – of Fremantle and Port Adelaide, and particularly Fremantle.  I find it hard to understand what the Fremantle coach is saying at the best of times, but it did appear to me the other night that he was saying that he has devised a game-plan that his players are not capable of implementing.  I think that may well be true.

In my view, playing footy comes down to other things that we try in life, like being a chef, writing a book, or running a murder case.  You take a certain amount of ability for granted, and the rest is character.  When you look at a bunch of players that form a footy team, what matters is the way in which that given ability is brought out in each player and then encouraged as part of that team.  Students of war tell us that people don’t die for the flag or the nation but for those near them.  It is the same, I think, with footy players.  The object of those running the team is therefore to get the players to develop a warranted faith in each other and an assured endeavour to trust and look after each other.

You see that happen in clubs that have the right character or fibre in themselves.  For the last decade or so, those AFL clubs have been Hawthorn, Geelong, and Sydney.  You can just about see that character or fibre in the way their players come out on the field – and certainly in the way they carry themselves in the heat of battle.  The fibre is transmitted on field by established leaders who command both respect and subscription.  Our politicians have something to wonder at.  And the good clubs have a ruthless policy of ‘no dickheads’.  Something else for our politicians to consider.

What I suspect has happened at sides like Fremantle and Port Adelaide is that the clubs have forgotten the need to develop character in the players and in the club as a whole.  Instead of locking in the basics, they and their coaches have got carried away with stratagems.  They have lost the plot.  They have whipped the cream before baking the cake.  Footy was after all supposed to be a bloody game.

Of the three Melbourne teams I take an interest in, Melbourne Storm has shown fibre for years, and has the best leaders on the field in the competition; there is for the first time in about thirty years a chance that the Demons might find a warranted faith in each other, and that their club may recover some fibre; the Rebels do not look like it doing it yet.

As to the coaches, the main ingredient in character that is required is honesty.

If you want to know what fibre means in footy teams, compare a New Zealand rugby team to one of ours.

Poet of the month: Auden

Bird-Language

Trying to understand the words

Uttered on all sides by birds,

I recognize in what I hear

Noises that betoken fear.

 

Though some of them, I’m certain, must

Stand for rage, bravado, lust,

All other notes that birds employ

Sound like synonyms for joy.

Passing Bull 39 – Corporations and churches

/ Geoffrey Gibson / 2 Comments

 

A church has been heavying business about gay marriage.  The Business Manager of the Archdiocese of Sydney wrote to various corporations on the subject of ‘marriage equality’.  The church is politically opposed to changes in the law favoured by those who seek to promote what they call marriage equality.

The letter says that the Archdiocese is ‘a significant user of goods and services from many corporations.’  It refers to a ‘Catholic population of 600,000 within the Archdiocese accounting for 26.7% of the total population’.  The author says: ‘I only mention this to indicate the diverse and expansive demographic we serve’.  Really?

It would be interesting to know the definition of ‘Catholic’ that gets the writer over 25%.  But why is the writer so coy about saying that the church is in a position to punish people commercially unless they toe the church line on this political issue?  Does the author deny that the church is seeking to use its market power to bring political pressure to bear on people?  Does the writer believe that the rest of us just came down with the last shower?

The author wonders if it is ‘the role of a corporation such as yours’ – the letter I have was not addressed to a corporation –‘to be participating in such an important matter that impacts all of Australian society now and in the future.’  The author thinks that the conduct of this corporation on behalf of stakeholders ‘is indeed over stepping their purpose and is to be strongly resisted.’

The language is glutinous, but why does a corporation not have as much right as a church to speak on a political issue such as this?  And was the writer expressing the views of more than a quarter of the population?

Then there is a curious remark.  ‘Many people who support the traditional definition of marriage have loved ones with same-sex attraction and of course strongly object to them being discriminated against.’  Do those standing behind the author only have loved ones who are gay?  Are not some of the communicant members of the church themselves gay?  Or is that a consummation devoutly to be avoided?

The author takes objection to redefining marriage to fit ‘an ideological agenda’ that is against beliefs and faiths that have been held for ages.  Popes said much the same to Galileo, and Anglican divines said much the same to Darwin, although their menaces were not commercial.  The church’s Business Manager refers to a ‘cashed-up activist-driven media campaign.’

You wonder why a church would engage in name-calling about applying pressure when it is seeking to do precisely that.  And what’s wrong with cash?

For that matter, you wonder why the writer thought it was a good idea to make these threats – and I concede that the author would not concede that he is uttering threats – to someone like the Chairman of Partners of Maurice Blackburn.

For that matter, you wonder why if you are losing a war you do not just seek to go out with some dignity rather than stooping to the perceived vulgarity of your enemy.

But what really elevates this letter into bullshit par excellence is its unstated premise – that the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney is a discrete legal entity, a significant consumer, and a body that can and does engage commercially and politically – and, presumably, one that could sue and be sued.

Unless of course someone wanted to sue it for a breach of trust committed by one of its priests.

 

Poet of the Month W H Auden

 

Lullaby – extract

 

Lay your sleeping head, my love,

Human on my faithless arm;

Time and fevers burn away

Individual beauty from

Thoughtful children, and the grave

Proves the child ephemeral:

But in my arms till break of day

Let the living creature lie,

Mortal, guilty, but to me

The entirely beautiful.

 

Soul and body have no bounds:

To lovers as they lie upon

Her tolerant enchanted slope

In their ordinary swoon,

Grave the vision Venus sends

Of supernatural sympathy,

Universal love and hope;

While an abstract insight wakes

Among the glaciers and the rocks

The hermit’s carnal ecstasy.

Passing bull 38 – Contrite capitalists

/ Geoffrey Gibson / 1 Comment

 

 

A good moment in the film The Big Short comes at the end.  Who goes to jail for all the fraud that was so cruel to so many people in the GFC?  Sweet F A.  The audience is terse and not amused.  Grievances are building.

The other day Goldman Sachs handed over a bribe – that is what it was – to settle a lot of claims.  About five billion dollars.  Eight years on, no one has been named, much less charged, much less jailed.  Just some computer entries – everything nice and quiet, an agreement between lawyers and other suits; people who can be relied on.

Reuters reported:

Goldman also acknowledged a Justice Department statement of facts describing how the firm misled investors.

For example, Goldman’s due diligence for one issue of 2006 mortgage-backed securities showed that some of the loan pools reflected an ‘unusually high’ percentage of loans with credit and compliance programs, the Department said.

‘How do we know that we caught everything?’ asked a Goldman committee tasked with reviewing and approving mortgage-backed securities, according to the Justice Department. ‘We don’t,’ a Goldman manager said.

‘Depends on what you mean by everything? Because of the limited sampling… we don’t catch everything,’ another Goldman manager said.

Still, the committee approved the securities without requiring additional due diligence, said the Justice Department, which did not identify those involved.

How did the not guilty party, Goldman Sachs, show its contrition for its ruinous lies?

‘We are pleased to put these legacy matters behind us,’ a Goldman spokesman said in a statement. ‘Since the financial crisis, we have taken significant steps to strengthen our culture, reinforce our commitment to our clients, and ensure our governance processes are robust,’ he said.

These people are so bent that they would probably charge a fee for bullshit as gross as that.

Here again there is one law for the rich and one for you and me.  That is why the Panama Papers are so inflammatory and that it is why the knives will be out for Palmer.  He has looked after his family and mates, and welched on his workers.

The Australian showed his wife in a Hermès shirt and said that we told you so; the ABC and Fairfax were conned; and it is all the fault of the cops.  You can take that or leave it – either way, our press is complicit in the collapse of confidence in business and government.

Poet of the month: W H Auden

Epitaph on a tyrant

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,

And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;

He knew human folly like the back of his hand,

And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;

When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,

And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

Passing bull 37 – Corporate culture

/ Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

 

People have been talking about corporate ‘culture’ and the extent to which directors get involved in managing the business of a company.  By ‘culture’, I understand the attitude of employees that affects the way that they and therefore the company do business.  If employees have an attitude that does not affect the way that they and the company do business – such as a distaste for people of a different sex, faith, or race – that attitude may not be of any interest to those who run the company.  But if an attitude does affect the way that they and the company do business, then it must be of interest to those who run the company.

The following propositions are basic.

First, the business of the company is to be managed by or under the direction of the directors.  (That statutory provision may be replaceable, but its effect can hardly be displaced.)

Second, the directors and employees of a company are bound to serve it in good faith, and to act in the best interests of the company, and they should avoid personal interests or other duties that conflict with their duty to act in the best interests of the company.

Third, if the company is advising a customer, or is otherwise in a position of trust with a customer, it will generally be subject to the same duties to its customer as its directors and employees owe to it – it must act in good faith and in the best interests of the customer and avoid interests or other duties that conflict with their duty to act in the best interests of the customer.

Those rules are clear.  Let us then take an example which is hardly hypothetical.  A company in the business of giving advice pays its employees at a rate that increases with the volume of advice that they give to customers of the company.  The employees do not disclose this to customers.  The personal interests of those employees then put the company in a position of conflict with its duty to act in the best interests of the customer.  This then is an issue in managing the business of the company that the directors must resolve.

It is absurd to question the role of directors in managing a company.  They are legally responsible for the management of that business.

Poet of the Month: W H Auden

In Memory of W B Yeats – Part II (February, 1939)

Earth, receive an honoured guest:

William Yeats is laid to rest.

Let the Irish vessel lie

Emptied of its poetry.

In the nightmare of the dark

All the dogs of Europe bark,

And the living nations wait,

Each sequestered in its hate;

Intellectual disgrace

Stares from every human face,

And the seas of pity lie

Locked and frozen in each eye.

Follow, poet, follow right

To the bottom of the night,

With your unconstrained voice

Still persuade us to rejoice;

With the farming of a verse

Make a vineyard of the curse,

Sing of human unsuccess

In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart

Let the healing fountain start,

In the prison of his days

Teach the free man how to praise.

Passing Bull 36 – Defending your legacy

/ Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

 

Tony Abbott says that he is entitled to defend the legacy of ‘his’ government.  So do his mates in the press.  What do they mean?

A legacy is a gift that you make in a will to take effect on your death.  Mr Abbott may be the only person in Australia who is yet to acknowledge that he is relevantly ‘dead’ – or even that his government is dead.

Well before the time when the Olympic Games were held in Melbourne, my late father told me to be careful about blowing my own trumpet.  That was good advice.  What else is Mr Abbott doing now but blowing his own trumpet?  Well, he may be attempting to do a number of other things, but none of those things does him any credit, or does any good for the political party that he is supposed to serve.

Of course Mr Abbott is free to blow his own trumpet – just as he is free to say that climate change is crap or that he will not let his religious beliefs interfere with his politics.  He is perfectly entitled to talk bullshit as much as he likes.  But not on my time, or while he is on my payroll.

One of the reasons that the parliamentary colleagues of Mr Abbott sacked him was that he talks bullshit all the time, and that he does not realise it.  That is still the case.  Even the other day, he was still talking about ‘stopping the boats’.  That was bullshit too – he hasn’t yet revealed to us what we should do with the people who were on the boats that we stopped.  It’s not the boats that worry us – it’s the people on them.  This was just one of his mantras.

The verdict of his party is in, and we already knew that Mr Abbott cannot face reality, and that he would not accept the decision of the umpire, his party.  So, the next time you meet a galah that has been fired, ask them what they are doing to protect their legacy.  The answer could be quite a hoot.

Poet of the month: Judith Wright

Weapon

The will to power destroys the power to will.

The weapon made, we cannot help but use it;

it drags us with its own momentum still.

 

The power to kill compounds the need to kill.

Grown out of hand, the heart cannot refuse it;

the will to power undoes the power to will.

 

Though as we strike we cry ‘I did not choose it’,

it drags us with its own momentum still.

In the one stroke we win the world and lose it.

The will to power destroys the power to will.

Passing Bull 35 – Could Tim Wilson be the best bullshit-artist this country has ever seen?

/ Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

 

In the outer about half a century ago, you could hear remarks addressed to VFL umpires as follows: ‘You’re all just bloody mushrooms.  Raised in the dark, big heads, short stalks, and you thrive on bullshit.’  It could refer to any Oz politician, but whenever I see Freedom Boy – Tim Wilson – my mind turns to the outer and to those mushrooms.

At the end of this post is a copy of one I put out about twelve months ago when Tim decided that the massacre at Charlie Hebdo was a good platform for him to sprout some bullshit on his chosen ideology.

Now Tim is headed for parliament.  Timbo’s soul-mate, Janet Albrechtsen, gushed about it in The Australian this morning

Both Wilson and Paterson hail from the IPA, Australia’s premier voice of freedom, of which I am a director. There are no passengers at the IPA. It’s a lean machine that cannot afford to carry anyone who is not an outstanding warrior for the freedom cause. Neither Paterson nor Wilson were assured of winning their preselections. Their credentials won the day and their preselection speeches reminded party members that in an election year candidates need to hit the road running. As Wilson told preselectors on Sunday: “I have defended liberalism from behind enemy lines” — even on ABC television’s Q&A. “If Liberals don’t make the case for freedom and responsibility, no one will.”

Wilson gave up his well-paid job as Freedom Commissioner (Human Rights Commissioner) to fight for the Goldstein seat. He faced tough competition from a strong local candidate, Denis Dragovic and the impressive Georgina Downer. Wilson won notwithstanding a disgraceful smear campaign from Liberal Party opponents who suggested, among other things, that he “is a danger to our families, schools and community” for supporting the original Safe Schools program. That was just one of many outright lies. Wilson raised concerns with the Coalition government last year about the program.

Attorney-General George Brandis is right that, in less than half of his five-year term as Freedom Commissioner, Wilson “single-handedly reshaped the human rights debate in Australia”.

If that does not make you ill, you are to be congratulated or pitied.  It was the Attorney-General – Bookshelves Brandis – who made all Freedom Boy’s birthdays come at once, and now he celebrates a statutory corporation, which is supposed to be apolitical, being infected by ideological claptrap.  God help us- some of these poor bastards never get out of school.  And the Liberal Party has another ideological warrior in the house.  God help us.

It is hard to imagine a better example of why our politics make us feel ill.  Tim will be our new model MP.  Big head; no brains; never had a real job; neck in the trough for life; but just full of bullshit.

PREVIOUS POST (8 March 2015)

A man called Tim Wilson was appointed as Australia’s Human Rights Commissioner in February 2014 on a package that is now north of $400,000 a year according to press reports.  What were his credentials for this high office and even higher pay-cheque?  Mr Wilson sets out his credentials on his website as follows.

About Tim

Tim Wilson is Australia’s Human Rights Commissioner and a classical liberal public policy analyst. He is one of Australia’s most challenging opinion leaders drawing on strong philosophical principles, backed up with evidence while maintaining a real-world edge. Passionate. Controversial. Fearless. He’s not afraid to be outspoken in offering an optimistic solutions-focused perspective on local and international issues that gets people engaging and talking.

Quick summary

  • Appointed as Australia’s Human Rights Commissioner for five years from February 2014.
  • International public policy analyst specialising in international trade, health, intellectual property and climate change policy.

Recognition

  • Recognised by The Australian newspaper as one of the ten emerging leaders of Australian society as part of its 2009 Next 100
  • Inaugural graduate of Monash University’s John Bertrand leadership series.
  • Australian Leadership Award from the Australian Davos Connection 2010 recipient.
  • Recognised by Same Same as one of Australia’s 25 most influential gay and lesbian Australians in 2010.
  • Fellow of the 2010 Asialink Leaders Program at the University of Melbourne.
  • Participant in The Australian newspaper’s 2011 Shaping Our Future: Ideas to Change a Century series on public health financing.
  • Inaugural participant in the 2011 Australian-ASEAN Emerging Leaders Programme run by ISIS Malaysia, the St James Ethics Centre and Asialink…..
  • Twice-elected President of the Monash University Student Union.
  • Selected as a News and Public Affairs judge at the 2012 TV Week Logie Awards.

Media and commentary

  • Regularly published in print media, including The Australian, the Wall Street Journal Asia and Europe and the Australian Financial Review and newspapers across Australia and the Asia Pacific.
  • Appears on Australian and international television and radio.
  • Regular radio programs on 2CC, 3AW, 4BC, 6PR & 774.
  • Regular guest on New York’s nationally syndicated radio program, the John Batchelor show, with John Batchelor and US editorial board member, Mary Kissel.
  • Regular television programs including ABC’s Q&A, The Drum and News Breakfast, Channel Ten’s Bolt Report and Sky News’ The Nation, the Contrarians and Lunchtime Agenda.
  • Previously co-hosted ABC News 24 TV’s Snapshot
  • Regularly contributes to journals and books and speaks at conferences.

Education

  • Currently completing a Graduate Diploma of Energy and the Environment (Climate Science and Global Warming) at Perth’s Murdoch University.
  • Completed specialist executive education on intellectual property, diplomacy and global public health in a joint program of  New Jersey’s Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology at Seton Law School and Geneva’s Institut de Hautes Études Internationales et du Développment.
  • Completed specialist eexecutive education on global public health policy and diplomacy in a joint program of Geneva’s Institut de Hautes Études Internationales et du Développment and the World Health Organisation.
  • Completed specialist executive education on intellectual property at the World Intellectual Property Organisation’s Worldwide Academy.
  • Studied the WTO, International Trade and Development at Geneva’s Institut de Hautes Études Internationales et du Développment.
  • Trained carbon accountant from Swinburne.
  • Completed a Masters of Diplomacy and Trade (International Trade) from the Monash Graduate School of Business.
  • Completed a Bachelor of Arts (Policy Studies) from Monash University.
  • Completed a Diploma of Business.

Board and professional service

  • Current Board Director of Alfred Health (Alfred, Caulfield and Sandringham hospitals) .
  • Current member of the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency’s Victorian Board for Nursing and Midwifery.
  • Former member of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s IP industry consultative group.
  • Previous Member of the Council of Monash University (Australia’s largest University with campuses in Australia, Malaysia, South Africa, Italy and the United Kingdom).
  • Previous appointed member of the Steering Committee of the Sydney Opera House’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas.
  • Previous Board Director of Monyx (Food and retail services company).
  • Previous Chairman and Board member of the Monash University Student Union Pty Ltd.

Previously

  • Former policy director at the Institute of Public Affairs – the world’s oldest free market think tank.
  • Former Senior Fellow at New York’s Center for Medicine in the Public Interest.
  • Worked in international development across South East Asia.
  • Delivered Australia’s 2006 logistical and policy aid program to help the Vietnamese government host APEC.
  • Trade, Intellectual Property and Environment policy consultant.

Personal

  • Member of the Fawkner Park Tennis Club, Melbourne Cricket Club, Melbourne Football Club, Mont Pelerin Society, Museum of Modern Art (New York), the National Gallery of Victoria, RACV Club, Royal Brighton Yacht Club and the Tate Modern (London).
  • Enjoys walking, running and bike riding.

Management

  • Mr Wilson is represented by Shaun Levin from Profile Talent Management, +61(0)3 8598 7808……

Well, it is evident that Mr Wilson has a God-given penchant for bullshit of the purest order. The intro to his website is five star rolled gold bullshit.  Mr Wilson has hardly any credentials at all for his office or pay-cheque – except a big head and a bigger mouth, and that penchant for pure bullshit.  And when Mr Wilson puts that mouth to work, the results are breathtaking.

Charlie Hebdo vs 18C: no contest, The Australian

Posted on January 19, 2015 by Tim Wilson

CHARLIE Hebdo would have been a legal publication in Australia. But it would have faced regular efforts to have it shut down or censored under state and federal laws.

In Australia the primary legal weapon used against Charlie Hebdo would have been section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, which makes it unlawful to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate on the basis of race, colour, national or ethnic origin.

18C doesn’t cover religion, but Charlie Hebdo published many cartoons on race as well as ethno-religious topics that could have been deemed offensive under it.

This is outlined in the explanatory memorandum to the bill that introduced 18C.

The memo said “it is intended that Australian courts would follow the prevailing definition of ‘ethnic origin’ … (which) involves consideration of one or more characteristics … this would provide the broadest basis for protection of peoples such as Sikhs, Jews and Muslims”. It’s this interpretation that led to former Sydney Morning Herald columnist Mike Carlton facing a complaint under 18C because of his disgraceful anti-Semitic language.

18C would have been used against Charlie Hebdo because it sets a low bar to restrict free speech. Administratively, 18C also makes it easy to take action; all you need is an aggrieved party and an arguable case.

Charlie Hebdo’s publishers would then have been caught up in regular disputes and subsequent legal battles if they refused to back down. After significant cost and time, courts would have had to test whether each cartoon enjoyed exemptions under the impossibly opaque section 18D of the act, which requires publication to be undertaken reasonably and in good faith.

Many cartoons were satirical, but they were also designed to strongly provoke and didn’t seek to minimise the offence caused. That may mean they wouldn’t always be covered by the exemptions.  Each one would have to be assessed on its merits.

Even if 18D did apply in all cases, that doesn’t justify 18C. Section 18D doesn’t protect free speech. Arguing it does is absurd. In practice, 18C declares you guilty, 18D allows you to profess your innocence.

Censorship doesn’t just occur because a court silences a voice. Censorship also occurs because bad laws allow publications to be bullied through legal processes until their only viable option is to cower and self-censor.

Charlie Hebdo would have been destroyed through a thousand 18C complaints.

The Charlie Hebdo massacre is a tragedy, and it should be a reminder that we need to defend free speech even when speech offends and insults.

Offence and insult are subjective, emotional responses to the actions of others.  Individuals can be offended and insulted by just about anything, even when it is not intended.  For that reason, a law that prohibits speech that merely offends and insults sets the bar too low. Instilling these principles in law ultimately leads to self-censorship.

For example, last year Anthony Mundine did an interview on Channel 7’s Sunriseprogram. During Andrew O’Keefe’s interview Mundine said Aboriginality and the “choice” of homosexuality were incompatible and homosexuality shouldn’t be shown on prime time television.  The basis of his comment was “Aboriginal law”.

Mundine has probably taken too many blows to the head in the boxing ring and his comments are stupid and offensive.  We can say both those things.  And in a free and democratic country Mundine should be allowed to say stupid and offensive things.

But that doesn’t mean the basis of his offensive comments is wrong.  Across the country I’ve met gay and lesbian Aboriginal Australians who have told me horrible stories of how they’re treated.

Not that poor treatment of gay and lesbian people is limited to Aboriginal culture.  Many ethnic cultures engage in even more horrific treatment of gay and ­lesbian people, including in Australia.

But if we want to harshly criticise the justification of Mundine’s commentary we risk offending his ethnic origins.  Because of 18C Australians have to cautiously discuss the topic, especially non-Aboriginal Australians.

The example highlights a fundamental flaw of 18C.  The assumption behind the law is that racism essentially comes from the dominant racial group against minorities. That isn’t the case. Sometimes minorities judge each other horribly and harshly.

One of the cheap party tricks of 18C’s defenders is asking the leading question: “What is it that you want to say that you can’t say?”  The assumption is that you want to say something racist.  That isn’t the case.  When Mundine made his despicable comments I censored my response because of 18C and the risk that I’d offend or insult his heritage.

Would I have been let off because of 18D?  Possibly. I can’t say with confidence my comments would have been judged to have been in “good faith”.

Regardless, I don’t fancy being hauled through the Human Rights Commission or a court for refusing to apologise.  So it is to self-censor rather than criticise another’s bigotry.

Chalk that up as a victory for social inclusion and harmony.  18C gives legal privileges to some to be bigots while we allow the law to intimidate others into self-censorship who want to respond.

Which of those remarks do you find to be the most sensible, coming as they did less than a fortnight after the murders?

The post is mainly about the meaning and effects of some of our laws.  Among the many tickets that Mr Wilson has collected, such as being a trained carbon accountant, a lawyer’s ticket is not one of them.  Well, who says that you should have some idea about what you are talking about?  This is a free country is not?  When you are pulling down a salary of about the level of that of the Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia?

Mr Wilson suffers from the intellectual malaise of his political masters and patrons, those most bounteous providers for his welfare.  He is not long on rational thought.  He prefers slogans and labels.  It all comes down to ‘censorship’ and self-censorship.

And notice how combative Mr Wilson gets with his opponents.  Those who disagree with him – or Mr Andrew Bolt – engage in ‘cheap party tricks’.  An aboriginal boxer said on TV that homosexuality and aboriginal law were incompatible and that homosexuality should not be shown on prime time TV.  Mr Wilson took serious offence at this, but he did not answer the allegation by looking at the meaning and effect of aboriginal law.  No, instead of rational and polite argument, Mr Wilson plays the man.  In AFL terms, he hangs out a coat-hanger.  ‘Mundine has probably taken too many blows to the head in the boxing ring and his comments are stupid and offensive’.  Not content with branding his opponent as punch-drunk, stupid and offensive, Mr Wilson later builds up to ‘despicable’ and ‘bigotry’, the intellectual death-knell of his primary patron.

The point of all this invective and venom, and self-mortification, appears to be that Mr Wilson fears that the law is so badly structured that it would not be safe for him publicly to answer or refute the proposition of the man that he is so happy to vilify at our expense.  That involves a legal question.  Perhaps Mr Wilson may have sought legal advice about what he as saying.  Then he should have been told that nearly everything that he had said was bullshit.

Poet of the Month: Judith Wright

Autumn Fires

Old flower-stems turn to sticks in autumn,

clutter the garden, need

the discipline of secateurs.

Choked overplus, straggle of weed,

cold souring strangling webs of root;

I pile the barrow with the lot.

Snapped twig that forgets flower and fruit,

thought branch too hard to rot,

 I stack you high for a last rite.

When twigs are built and match is set,

your death springs up like life; it’s flare

crowns and consumes the ended year.

Corruption changes to desire

that sears the pure and wavering air,

and death goes upward like a prayer.

Passing Bull 34 The strange death of decent journalism

/ Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

 

I should confess to bias.  I was professionally involved in the publishing of a decent book about the Abbott government.

The book by Niki Savva is not decent.  We suspect that our politics are rotten.  This book shows that political hacks who have become soi disant journalists are in that rottenness up to their necks.  The bad sports journalists do not report on games – they moralise, too often with malice, about the politics of that part of the entertainment industry that we call sport.  The bad political journalists do not report on political issues – they moralise, too often with malice, about personality, popularity, and gossip.

We have now reached a new low point.  If a lawyer or journalist is going to comment adversely on someone, they must offer that person the opportunity to respond.  That is one of the rules of their games.  It is also common sense and common decency.  We instinctively recoil from an ambush made in defiance of manners and fairness.

Niki Savva recounted a rumour that no decent person wants to have in the air about them.  In breach of her rules, and in defiance of courtesy, she did not put it to her targets to allow them to respond.  Why not?  She would not be able to trust their responses.  In compounding the libel, Savva praised the courage of others who also wield their knives from behind.  Can you guess what team Niki was playing for?  Where does that leave clause 1 of the Code of Ethics?

This journalist sought to justify her failure of ethics by saying that she has formed an adverse view on the credibility of her targets.  She is therefore prejudiced against them.  This moral landslide in turn appears to entail that when it comes to that little thing called ‘truth’, this journalist has the powers of God.

May God help the test of us, and protect us from the thirty pieces of silver.

Poet of the Month: Judith Wright

The flame-tree

How to live, I said, as the flame-tree lives?

  • to know what the flame-tree knows; to be

prodigal of my life as that wild tree

and wear my passion so?

The lover’s knot of water and earth and sun,

that easy answer to the question of baffling reason,

branches out of my heart this sudden season.

I know what I would know.

How shall I thank you, who teach me how to wait

to quietness for the hour to ask or give:

to take and in taking bestow, in bestowing live:

in the loss of myself, to find?

This is the flame-tree; look how gloriously

that careless blossomer scatters, and more and more.

What the earth takes of her, it will restore.

These are the thanks of lovers who share one mind.