Post-script

In the very first post for this blog, I said that "I am looking to an opportunity to reinvigorate myself."

I can safely say that I achieved that. I am clearer on how I can go about finishing this darned degree and how I can get on with the final half of my life. The blog has been a worthwhile exercise for me and it is something that I do actually look forward to returning to over the years to come. It captures a particular period of my life quite nicely. 

I also look forward to the 2017 Bendigo Writers Festival. I look forward to taking my time and absorbing the sessions and to just loiter in the general ambiance of bookish delight. 

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I leave this blog with the world looking more than just a little nutty. 

The weekend news sites are filled with stories about an audio tape that has emerged of Donald Trump making lewd remarks about women. (source) 

It remains to be seen whether or not this will finish off his candidature for president. Sadly even if Trump does pullout or is replaced, the celebrity culture that exists that made Trump a contender will remain. The decay of the United States of America and the vulgarity and violence of neoliberal capitalism will just move onto its next freak show. 

It is no comfort knowing that Hilary Clinton moves closer to the White House. A careerist politician and part of an elite that has corrupted American democracy. A war mongering free market fundamentalist. With Hilary as president the rest of the world can look forward to new wars for profit. 

The USA lost out when Bernie Sanders did not get the nomination for the Democrats. 

In Australia, the plight of asylum seekers held in indefinite detention continues. It is not off-shore detention for processing refugee claims, but rather a system of corporate profiteering. It is a disgrace and something one day Australia will have to reckon with. 

Martin McKenzie-Murray has a piece in this weekend's Saturday Paper - 'Leaked UNHCR report: Manus Island world's worst'. It concludes with the undeniable observation

Let it never be said that we didn't know. 

endgame

this is the end

1/ An event 2/ The People 3/ Institutions and industries 4/ Words 5/ Worlds

The West is the Best 

The public space in times of neoliberal induced uncertainty

And how writers festivals might just save us 

Subjective Bias #2

The Happy Song!

I was at the gym early this morning making awkward sweaty grunting noises on the cross trainer watching some sort of breakfast television program that was talking about peoples favourite happy songs.

Well, mine is 'The Great Song of Indifference'. Fond memories of long ago at the Foundry Arms Hotel on a Friday night. 

I don't mind if you go
I don't mind if you take it slow
I don't mind if you say yes or no
I don't mind at all

I don't care if you live or die
Couldn't care less if you laugh or cry
I don't mind if you crash or fly
I don't mind at all

I don't mind if you come or go
I don't mind if you say no
Couldn't care less baby let it flow
'Cause I don't care at all

Na na na, ...

I don't care if you sink or swim
Lock me out or let me in
Where I'm going or where I've been
I don't mind at all

I don't mind if the government falls
Implements more futile laws
I don't care if the nation stalls
And I don't care at all

I don't care if they tear down trees
I don't feel the hotter breeze
Sink in dust in dying sees
And I don't care at all

Na na na , ...

I don't mind if culture crumbles
I don't mind if religion stumbles
I can't hear the speakers mumble
And I don't mind at all

I don't care if the Third World fries
It's hotter there I'm not surprised
Baby I can watch whole nations die
And I don't care at all

I don't mind I don't mind I don't mind I don't mind
I don't mind I don't mind
I don't mind at all

Na na na , ...

I don't mind about people's fears
Authority no longer hears
Send a social engineer
And I don't mind at all

Read more: Bob Geldof - The Great Song Of Indifference Lyrics | MetroLyrics 

Save the world and just Say No to Facebook!

Roy Greenslade has an article on the Facebookisation of news that appears on the Guardian. 'Why Facebook is public enemy number one for newspapers, and journalism.' 

Deeply concerning stuff. 

It does confirm my overall distrust of 'social media'. 

The following is from Greenslade's article. 

It has always been the case from the dawn of media that the controllers of news outlets - newspapers, TV and radio, online - make choices about what to publish and, more significantly, what not to publish. So is there a real need to be especially concerned about Facebook?

Yes, writes the Guardian’s Jemima Kiss in the latest issue of the British Journalism Review. In her article, “A giant that may eat us”, she contends that the world’s leading social media site is exerting both an “increasing domination of internet advertising revenue and control of a significant part of a critical distribution platform.”

And further

Users “willingly pour endless personal information about themselves into Facebook” and that enables the site “to sell targeted advertising around them.” 

So what? 

Before cynics shout about that not being a bad thing (while digital optimists assert that independent, and therefore better, journalism will arise in its place), think of the perils we face without a collective of organised, skilled journalists working for organisations large enough to hold power to account.

The Facebookisation of news has the potential to destabilise democracy by, first, controlling what we read and, second, by destroying the outlets that provide that material.  

Yup. Reason enough to stay away from Facebook. 

The funny things that distract me

Distraction. 

The problem with the internet is it just opens up a vast and endless opportunities to be distracted. 

One thing links to another and time just disappears. 

I was checking the Twitter feed of a news service which led me to an artticle by Michael Mann titled 'Michael Mann's Hotlist of the 9 Most Prominent Climate Deniers'. 

Not surprisingly Rupert Murdoch is listed and unsurprisingly it says this.

Fox News has constructed an alternate universe in which the laws of physics no longer apply; the greenhouse effect is a myth and climate change is a hoax... 

I am not sure how it happened but some time later I found myself on Source Watch and was reading this about Murdoch and the Iraq War.

In March 2003, Speaking at the Milken Institute Global Conference, Murdoch backed Bush government plans to invade Iraq. "We worry about what people think about us too much in this country. We have an inferiority complex, it seems," he said.
"I think what's important is that the world respects us, much more important than they love us ... There is going to be collateral damage. And if you really want to be brutal about it, better we get it done now than spread it over months," he said.  

And then later I'm on Counter Punch reading 'Rupert Murdoch and the Israeli Genie'  where author Michael Dickinson is asking of Rupert Murdoch

Don’t you want people to learn that you are part-owner of an Israeli-American company which has landed a shale oil exploration and production license covering 238 square miles in the Judean Hills and on occupied Syrian land, even though this is plainly illegal under international law?

And then the next paragraph makes me go a-ha!

Should not FOX News and Murdoch-owned news outlets disclose this hot story to their millions of viewers and readers? Should they not be made aware that the Murdoch-owned news outlets which generally support U.S. military action against Syria, do not inform their viewers and readers that the bossman has a vested interest in war and the overthrow of the Assad government in Damascus in order to further Genie’s oil exploration efforts in occupied Syria? 

And this is happening while I am being further distracted by coverage of Australia's prime-minister, Malcolm Turnbull, telling the United Nations how wonderful Australia's asylum seeker policy is. (Malcolm Turnbull tells world leaders to follow Australia's asylum policies)

And where is it that many of those who are held in Australia's off-shore detention centres are from again? 

Grizzly Jason!

Maybe there's a world where we don't have to run...

Grizzly Adams died the other week. 

I found myself wondering if Grizzly Adams would make sense to today's tech savvy and pop-culture sophisticated youngsters. 

Anyway, I think my daydreams of just vanishing to somewhere 'natural' and simply occupying my time with critters and cloud watching probably springs from watching The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams as a child. 

I guess when that is combined with The Muppets I developed a taste for the fantastic early on.