The disturbing thing here is that censorship and intolerance have become so mainstream - depending on WHO and WHAT is being censored and not tolerated. We are being told which words we can use, and which words we can’t use. Some people can use certain words, but others can’t use the very same words. One group of people can be insulted, but another group cannot. One offensive word is okay, but another isn’t. A group of people can put so much pressure on a radio and TV network that they can get someone fired within a few days of uttering TWO words that they feel are offensive. The radio and TV networks were absolutely spineless in their reaction to pressure.
Median Sib. Blog.
Often I am told how certain people value tolerance. The most irritating are a certain species of left/liberal/progressive. If it doesn’t apply to you, please don’t be offended. This species claims it is tolerant based on certain beliefs they have. For example, they believe homosexuals deserve equal marriage rights or stem cell research should be funded by the government, and since they are not opposed on religious grounds, they are “tolerant.” Typically these are amongst the most intolerant people one can meet.
They confuse having positions that suggest tolerance in a specific instance with actually being tolerant.
Quick to condemn others for “reactionary” views, belittle their intelligence, etc. It doesn’t matter that I agree in a large number of cases, their belief is one must agree. They confuse having positions that suggest tolerance in a specific instance with actually being tolerant. This would be no big deal if it was hot air, but when in the hands of a left/liberal/progressive it goes from a personal failing and hypocrisy to a real threat. People of the left need to be more tolerant than others because to not be so means that the force of the state is right around the corner. I can be a bigot whose speech knows no bounds and all I am is offensive as long as I don’t believe in the states right to do anything about it.
The preferences of the left however all to often need to carry the force of law. If they believe fast food isn’t good for me, next thing you know an effort is underway to restrict it.
A Second Hand Conjecture.
"When I do go to a professional meeting, I sit silently. When the conservative-bashing starts, as it so often does, I know better than to complain."
David Durant.
Oh how very severe they had become, in their short flittering life spans, in the grand moments and foggy memories, in a time when youth no longer buttressed him against the harshness of this place, when all was lost and he struggled drunkenly towards a pole, clinging to it for safety. He was in awe. The rain was streaming down from the buildings in ribbons of light; everything a drunken swirl. Couldn't you have been released? Couldn't we have been comforted? The brain damage started early, that's what he was afraid of, the black diseases eating through the fabric of the cells, leaving darkness, derangement, sure-fire death.
The Dalai Lama finishes his trip to Australia today. He spoke of origination and causality, and laughed during his rambling expositions. He sat on a multi-coloured throne, flanked by at least 20 orange clad monks on either side, ornate Buddhist panelling rising up behind him, astonishing flower arrangements, white cyclamens dotted along the front. It was high Buddhist art, the best they had to offer, just like high Catholicism. I am often asked what is the meaning of life, he said. And spoke of simplicity and happiness. And not so simply, dependant origination, causality, a complex theory on nothingness, the connections of everything.
These were wild frames, dark frames, initial impulses, the giant Coca Cola sign swirling above his head, the drunken lurch to the chemist which sold speed for 20 cents a capsule, back in the 1960s before the wowsers ruined everything, the sound of the train shunting past their house when all had collapsed, when all was lost. When he could hear the faintest echo or the faintest movement, the stirring of the residents in their troubled beds, the comfort and warmth of the occasional blissful household, toast and marmalade for breakfast.
But these heightened moments were rare, and had always frightened him. He was convinced of the decay, the eroding personality, the looming end of everything. All his childhood they had waited for God to come, the cupboards filled with bottles of water in case of the end, before they would have to flee. To Jordon, to Petra, it seemed, transported in the rapture, God's creatures. Even here, in far-off Australia, in remote and gloomy roads and houses that had never known love, God would find them and take them and protect them, because they had been good, they had studied and believed, and he had found them, even here.
The practicalities of belief would always haunt him. Even now, he felt like an atheist at a mass in St Mary's cathedral more often than not. They rabbitted on about their higher power and salvation; and he was too awkward, too isolated, too separate, to even admit that yes, even he needed to belong. Even here, with these perfect Buddhist images, the Dalai Lama warned of devil worship, of stoking and supporting disruptive spirits. As if it was all true, too easily true, the world behind the world, beneath the veil. He tried persistently to understand, amidst memories and little comprehension, and was frozen out for his trouble.
How brief the passage, how brief our time. The world had stretched into infinity, the wet Sydney streets, his profound awkwardness, the infinite pleasures that danced through his veins, the social intrigue, the incidental networks, the profound discontent, the talent and promise of greatness, as if he would automatically be rewarded for being different, the inner-city terraces and the shapes of bare branches against the sky, he was being warmed and warned at the same time, as he stumbled down familiar streets, drunk, yet again drunk, the state he had desired so constantly. There were bruises up and down his arm, badges of honour and dereliction, and he intended, not just then but throughout his life, to sacrifice to art, to creation, to the grander scheme, so that all he made would be an artefact, a scaffolding, of great, profound, luminescent beauty. He thought all these things, as he pushed the Paddington bar door open once again, inhaling the smell of alcohol and cigarettes as if they were incense.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/peter-hartcher/2008/06/15/1213468240551.html
TODAY'S Herald/Nielsen poll shows that Kevin Rudd and Brendan Nelson both have problems. But, if you had a choice, you'd much rather have Rudd's.
The Prime Minister's difficulty is with petrol. Most respondents - 56 per cent - don't like the way he has handled petrol prices.
And a big majority - two-thirds of the overall sample - say they think he should cut taxes on petrol.
This is tricky for Rudd, for two reasons.
First, because he gave the impression last year that he could "do something" about petrol prices. He did not promise - he is too clever for that - but he did set up a vague expectation that he could somehow help "working families" cope with rising petrol prices. Rudd himself created that expectation.
Second, there are no responsible ways of quickly cutting petrol prices by any meaningful margin. Cutting the federal fuel tax is populist policy that would only harm national revenue, economic adjustment, and the coming effort to deal with global warming.
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23863360-5001030,00.html
IN THE most private recesses of their minds, some Labor figures are thinking the unthinkable: could Kevin Rudd be a one-term prime minister, the first of the modern era?
Rudd himself has warned that although the Government appears to have a healthy majority on paper, a good number of its seats are held by wafer-thin margins.
But this is a mathematical assessment. What's driving the pessimism - albeit still nascent - in Labor ranks is the Prime Minister's style of political management, his apparently boundless appetite for "gesture politics'' and the increasingly fractured narrative it creates.
Take last week's visit to Japan. Rudd was seen to have neglected Tokyo diplomatically by over-reaching on the China relationship - a miscalculation perceived to have bruised Japanese sensibilities.
This against a background of bellicose threats to take Japan to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over its "scientific'' whaling, backed by the dispatch of an Australian observer ship to collect video evidence of the Southern Ocean slaughter.
That last "gesture'' had enormous support in Australia. But, given his earlier bilateral miscalculation, by the time the Prime Minister reached Tokyo any threat to drag Tokyo to the ICJ had been unceremoniously jettisoned.
Instead, Rudd said Australia would pursue the whaling issue though diplomacy.
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23867787-5001031,00.html
By Malcolm Farr
June 16, 2008 12:00am
IF Kevin Rudd wasn't Prime Minister he might very much like to be Gareth Evans.
The travel, the meetings in high places, the great, chunky global issues to bite into - and the high work rate.
Evans, the former foreign minister now president and chief executive of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, has an activity level which makes Rudd look like he needs a shot of elephant juice.
By my calculation Evans has since 2000 spoken to some of the world's most influential forums in 103 major speeches for the ICG. That's better than one a month.
Plus he has written 103 articles for some of the most prominent newspapers and magazines.
And he has written or co-written five big reports on international matters, contributed chapters to 16 books, and in addition to his day job is on the UN advisory committee on prevention of genocide and mass atrocities.
And now he has taken up Rudd's offer to co-chair the Prime Minister's proposed commission on nuclear disarmament.
It's the sort of life a chap schooled in foreign affairs and public administration who likes to project his view of the world would dream of.
But, sorry Kevin. You're only a Prime Minister.
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