If you don’t laugh you lose

The war on terror and spying on everyone are both very serious business. The war on terror is killing people all over the world, including, sadly this week in Australia too.
The tragic death of Abdul Numan Haidar is not a laughing matter. The confusion, misinformation and outright lies being spread about this young man are appalling. That the news media is buying into it with awful headlines and front page stories vilifying him, his friends and even random, totally unconnected young men should shame some journalists into silence.

At the same time, the rush to cut into our liberties in the name of ‘protecting’ us from a shadowy threat that kills less people than bee stings is also not something to joke about, or is it?
In the last 24 hours a new Twitter hashtag has burst into prominence and it is taking the piss out of Raging Bedsore’s new surveillance powers.
Now that our security services have the right to monitor the whole of the inter-webs with just one warrant allowing them to tap into any computer ‘network’, it seems that nothing we do online is going to be private anymore.
Well, Twitter has always been a bit irreverent – do you remember the wonderful #TonysMovieNight, for example? And this week, #lifebeforeabbott has been trending too.
The rightwing trolls don’t like it and curmudgeonly columnists like Andrew Bolt complain (without even having a Twitter account) that social media is dominated by THE LEFT, but for those of us who
a) don’t like the Abbott government;
b) think the terror threat is overblown;
c) don’t like the idea of ASIO snooping on us around the clock and, more importantly,
d) have a sense of humour
then #HeyASIO is a great way to get your message across while having a bit of fun.

It’s only been active for  few hours, but by lunch time today it was trending heavily.

Check the stream yourself and prepare for a few belly laughs.
Here’s my highlights so far.

Ethical Martini’s top 10 #HeyASIO tweets

#HeyASIO quick question – what *is* metadata anyway?

— Lachlan Williams (@lawksland) September 26, 2014

#HeyASIO Is that one of your guys going through the bins behind Safeway? Or just another leaner?

— OperationSamidog (@Nihilon45) September 26, 2014

#HeyAsio Can you tell us where that budget emergency is hiding?

— Pariseve (@ParisandEve) September 26, 2014

#HeyAsio What’s it feel like to have lost the respect of the Aust ppl and made a total laughing stock at the hands of this Lib Govt?

— lorraine (@lorrainewhat) September 26, 2014

#heyasio no need to introduce myself! you’ve been spying on me since 1976. I have the files til 1985. What have I been doing since then?

— Ethical Martini (@ethicalmartini) September 26, 2014

#HeyASIO will you go out with me? ☐ Yes ☐ No

— Jono with an ‘o’ (@jono_hayward) September 26, 2014

#HeyASIO where did I save that picture of my cat with his head stuck in the ice-cream container?

— Lady Sonia McMahon (@soniaahhh) September 26, 2014

#HeyASIO I have dark brown hair and brown eyes. And I own a ‘Fuck Tony Abbott’ t-shirt. Wanna back up my iPhoto library??

— Kara (@MissMonty) September 26, 2014

#HeyASIO I have a smart phone and a knife, but I’m just trying to tweet and butter toast. It’s not going well.

— Señor Goat (@Senor_Goat) September 26, 2014

#heyasio is your surveillance of twitter getting out of control yet? pic.twitter.com/h7xHZMxtwE

— Team Insouciant R Us (@geeksrulz) September 26, 2014

I’m going to be LATE for the museum

LATE 04
Innovate: Media
Thursday, 3 June 2010

This month LATE at the Museum asks what a rapidly-changing digital landscape means for broadcasters, policy makers and of course us as audiences?

The evening will ask what is happening, and what needs to happen, to ensure the independence and profitably of content creators in the age of ‘open source’ media.

Is the Internet the friend or enemy of today’s broadcasters and journalists, and how can we sustain quality programming and reporting at a time when newsrooms are shrinking and people expect to read, hear and watch content for free?

Smart Talk

The evening features a panel discussion with Associate Professor of Journalism at AUT University, Dr Martin Hirst and Brent Impey, ex CEO, Mediaworks NZ (TV3, TV4). The discussion will be moderated by former editor of the New Zealand Listener and award-winning columnist Finlay Macdonald.

Great Music

Entertainment on the evening includes Little Bushman who return to the Museum for an encore following their spellbinding performance at our inaugural LATE, plus Jeremy Toy (Opensouls) with special guests.

Outrageous misfortune(s)

On occasions I am gobsmacked by the awful things that happen in the world. There’s an outrage every day that can be upsetting, or make me angry; but of course I don’t just wander around in a slack-jaw daze. For the most part, I am able to moderate my outrage with a quick “Fuck you,” when some prick comes on the TV news to tell me how much better off I am now that GST is at 15 per cent and my rent’s gone up.

We tend to shield ourselves from “the horror, the horror”; then again, most of the horrible things don’t come to our attention. The news self-censors to ensure that we don’t get too depressed and turn on our masters.

Those awful things that do come to our attention are now so commonplace we are almost psychologically immune. When was the last time you were angered by a new wave of senseless killing in Baghdad, Kabul or Peshawar? Do you really care if the “red shirts” win or lose?

With this post I want to introduce a new category “outrageous misfortune”. A summary reminder that despite our ability for magical thinking there’s “shit happening” that we should be conscious of. Stuff that reminds us that there’s still a long way to go to make this lump of rock a really “wonderful world”.

Campbell quits amid gay sex club claims

A New South Wales government minister has been forced to resign his portfolio after a Sydney TV station revealed that the married man was visiting gay sex-on-premises venues.

That of course is not a crime in sexually-liberal Sydney, but David Campbell drove himself to the venue in his ministerial car. “Outrageous misfortune” indeed.

Channel Seven justifies its surveillance of Mr Campbell because he was seen as a “family values” politician. The serious implication here is that somehow family values are incompatible with being gay. Campbell was “accused” of visiting the gay club as if it was some sort of crime. It’s not illegal to be gay (even a closeted married gay)  in NSW; but the fucked up holier-than-thou moral police in the media sense blood in the water around state politics and so Mr Campbell is just meat to them.

He wasn’t a very competent minister and the Labor government in NSW is an electoral stinker, but outing Campbell in this cruel way is really not part of the game.

Emirati woman reports gang rape, hit with legal sex charge

We are no longer shocked by stories of woman being victimised and abused in Islamic countries, but we should not lose sight of the issue just because it is no longer unusual.

This is a particularly awful case. A young woman pack-raped in the backseat of a car. She is then charged with “sex out of wedlock”. The young woman had the outrageous misfortune to be born female in a disgustingly patriarchal society dominated by a fundamentalist clerical elite. However, we won’t be seeing any “Operation Emirati Freedom” anytime soon. This religious backwater is a glutton’s haven of oil reserves and a strong ally of The Great Satan.

Gay couple in Malawi sentenced to 14 years

Two young men expressing their love for each other. That’s OK right? Unless you’re a nasty bigoted God-botherer you should not have a problem with same-sex “relations”. This is the 21st century after all.

Apparently not in Malawi (nor in many other countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia).

Tiwonge Chimbalanga, 20, and Steven Monjeza, 26 were convicted of unnatural acts and gross indecency under laws dating from the colonial era. That last bit is the most worrying. The hangover of repressive laws from the colonial period that are still used to persecute locals.

Tiwonge and Steven had recently been through an informal “engagement” ceremony. They had the outrageous misfortune to be gay in a nation that won’t tolerate homosexuality. 14 years in jail is as good as a death sentence for these two young men.

One bright spark in this outrage though; Amnesty International is going to adopt the boys as prisoners of conscience and campaign for their release.