What’s the target here? The aim, was the United States, and transparency. Sure, we all agree that there are certain elements to the way governments operate that need to be secret. But but not everything. At it seems that the answer is to burn the person who allowed the publication of the leaks. That’s right, chop the head off the guy who invented the guillotine. It will not stop its future use.

The myth of the Hydra is known to almost everyone; chop off the head and two will replace it. WikiLeaks is not a big organisation at the moment. It doesn’t need to be. All it needs is a couple of servers in a number of countries and a handful of people with access to them. But soon, it will grow. It will become one of the leading websites to go to if you are after real, hard information. Imprisoning Julian Assange is the same as chopping off the head of the Hydra. While there may not be someone as charismatic and identifiable as Assange to take his place, there will be a line of thousands of people ready to help take up the cause.

The charges that have been levelled at him may be true. That’s for a fair court to decide. But there’s no way way a fair trial will happen. The charges were dismissed earlier this year. How are they going to hold up a second time? He is (rightly) fearful of being extradited to the USA. Who knows what may happen to the case once he gets there.

The website, WikiLeaks, is being criticised by a great deal of people for endangering lives. But as many have said…what bullshit. Nothing was revealed from the cables that wasn’t already known. What was said may have been phrased a little more colloquially than normal, but it was all well known. There isn’t a diplomat from a country other than the States this week who read a newspaper and thought “thank god they didn’t publish what I said”. There’s no secret here. Everyone does not trust anyone.

And who would blame them? Focussing on Assange is pointless in the end. You cannot convict a martyr. Wikileaks provide a service that the entire “democratised” world has always said we have had: freedom of speech. And the ability for any individual to say: “I’ve had enough. This is what’s REALLY going on” is finally available. Where is the point of stopping the guy who founded a website? This will not go away, similar to how the world’s governments had to learn to deal with television differently after the Vietnam War.

The Internet changes everything. No longer do protest movements need a base. Yet the Internet gave them one, in the cyber cloud.

This new column appears thanks to one of our writer’s drunkenly seeing Frost/Nixon and deciding that commenting on political goings-on are important. A Gen Y opinion is just as important as anyone’s, if not more-so due to us being future “important people”. We will endeavor to comment every week but apologies in advance if it disintegrates.

Here we go, the inaugural edition of The X Edition, in which one of our writers looks at the political developments of the preceding week. We would like to give a slight forward to these opinions; they are half drunken and not necessarily a fully formed argument. Instead, they are a couple of sentences written in the heat of the moment, that hopefully show a little bit more of the truth behind what people think, but don’t normally articulate. This is not definitive, just ideas. It will be Australian-based,but all important issues will be considered.

And for this first edition, the proceeding week is not a constriction; all is fair game.

David Campbell: what has been done to him is unforgivable. In the sense that: who the fuck cares? All the revelations do not infringe on his abilities/priorities as a politician. What he does in his personal life has no standing on his ability as a minister. It was only thanks to a stupid journalist who thought it would be a good idea to reveal this information. The fact that he was using a ministerial car is irrelevant (guess what, government employees ACTUALLY PAY for their cars). Yes, he may have been lying to his wife and family. Yes, it’s a big story now that it’s out.

But.

It has no standing or impact on the NSW Labor Government. And it’s only through the media that it HAS become an issue. (The article in the Sydney Morning Herald about the legal problems faced by the Seven journalist that broadcasted these discoveries is just as morally questionable, by the way).

Tony Abbott: what a week. No matter what people say about Abbott trying to come clean about the way in which politicians operate, his gaff on the 7:30 Report is HUGELY significant. They’ve tried to play it down (and have arguably been successful), but the impact on the Liberal Party will be felt for a number of weeks. The way it develops from here will be interesting (at this point, polls are hugely significant).

Mining Super Tax: The Liberal Party could not have asked for such a platter served to them… The term “tax” is a gift, and any closer readings into the proposal by Rudd and co. reveals that it is NOT a tax. As soon as they mining revenue drops to a certain level, the government will be PAYING the mining companies. In the end, it encourages risky ventures. People need to read into things more, the media will make it seem like the end of the world for the general public if possible because it sells newspapers.

Oil spill: issue, then disappears. The impact of this spill can NOT be underestimated. What is it now, the second biggest spill in history? Yet it’s no longer an “issue”? Pay attention people.

Accountability: at what point are world leaders accountable for their failures? Yes, it seems like a purely theoretical question. But it’s not. The Copenhagen Climate Conference 2009 showed exactly that world leaders are not able to do what they are elected to do. They are meant to change the world. They are meant to make the world a better place to live in. They are meant to represent public opinion. Regardless of whether or not you think climate change is real (ed: if you don’t, fuck off. Seriously. We don’t want you reading),  you can NOT deny that we should be doing things better.

World leaders can be held accountable for crimes against humanity. At what point point is this a realistic possibility? After the world is ruined beyond all possible repair? What about now?

WHY CAN’T WORLD LEADERS BE CHARGED WITH CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY NOW?

Expect The Second Edition this time next week. And please, as always, let us know what you think.

An article was brought to my attention recently that piqued the argumentative centre of my brain. It spoke of the printing of a new claim by Jeffrey Schwartz and John Rehan in a scientific journal (Journal of Biogeography, DOI:10.1111/j.1365-2699.2009.02141.x if you care) that the current means in which we determine the relationship between us and our nearest relatives in the animal kingdom are wrong, and that taxonomic methods prove that orang-utans, not chimpanzees, are our nearest relatives.

Stay with me here. I’m sure that most people would respond with a resounding “who cares”, and so do I really. What got my attention wasn’t the subject of the article, but the response from the scientific community. Schwartz, Rehan and Robert Whittaker (editor of Journal of Biogeography) have all come under some pretty serious fire from the rest of the scientific community, because the claim declares that DNA sequencing is flawed. Many people are shocked that the journal published it at all. And I am shocked that scientists, of all people, would be so narrow-minded.

It makes me ask the question: whose opinion matters? And it’s not an easy question to answer.

Throughout history, general knowledge (that is, what we commonly take to be fact) has always been under attack by people with wild claims and differing opinions. Galileo was imprisoned for claiming many things that were thought to be wrong, that we now believe to be true. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace made some pretty tremendous claims about how we came to be here, and scientifically at least we now believe them to be true. Just because someone’s idea doesn’t swim with the proverbial school, it doesn’t mean they’re wrong.

So whose opinion matters more? If we were shown two leading theories of gravity for instance, are you more likely to listen to the professor who aced every test, or the man who failed maths in school? We still use general relativity today. Should someone’s notion be discounted because of who they are?

Does my opinion actually matter? I’m writing this article expressing it. If you’re reading it, surely I have some effect on you. Does your opinion matter? If a qualified journalist were to tell you that I am wrong, and they were right, who would you listen to?

Like I said, it’s a tricky question. We should at least respect the right of everyone to have their proposal properly interrogated. It may be a stupid idea, but there might be a small gem of genius embedded within. Schwartz and Rehan were brave enough to publish their theory, and the scientific community should have the respect to debate the point. Who knows, maybe something as simple as arguing about which is the more human monkey will shine light on the flaws of genome science and taxonomy, and force us to re-evaluate what we think to be true.

Or maybe I’m reading way too much into it, and this journal is full of shit. Time will tell.

All over the news in recent weeks has been the current unrest in Iran. The riots caused by the election results have been huge. A number of players from Iran’s soccer team have been banned for life for wearing a green armband in support of the opposition movement.

A previous post on this blog by Dave looked at the Tiananmen Square massacre, and whether or not people have a moral obligation to question what happened and ask the Chinese government to release information about what actually happened. While I don’t disagree with Dave’s post, we still have an ethical obligation to seek the truth. The problem with what’s happening in Iran, and Tehran specifically, is there is a very real fear/possibility of a similar thing happening. And it’s undeniable that a similar event should be avoided at all costs.

It’s possible that the current media blackout surrounding the protests, and the fact that foreign media have been expelled from the country, points to the possibility that the military have, or will, step in. Luckily, through footage from mobile phones and the use of New Media, some information is still getting out.

Iran will be a good case study showing how the importance of the use of New Media could potentially change political process. Sure, the launch of a Persian-language Facebook seems at first glance to be pointless. But think about it; like Tiananmen Square, the majority of the protesters seem to be students, who more so then any other group, are tech savvy. However, not everyone knows how to use the technology at their disposal. This is where Facebook, and Twitter, come into play. By giving everyone the tools, there is a greater possibility for any injustice to be seen by the world.

Google’s launch of a Persian translation service could be invaluable. If we ignore the fact that the translation isn’t 100 per cent accurate, it will still allow those in Iran to see what the rest of the world is reporting, and also will allow us to get some information from those that only speak Persian.

Given the reports that the Iranian (government controlled) media are mistranslating some of the things Barack Obama is saying about the unrest further proves the point. The Iranians need to understand exactly what the rest of the world thinks of the events.

In the end, there is still the possibility that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the election. However, the external analyses of the results points to undeniable inconsistencies. Anything that eventually causes a proper recount/re-election is a good thing. The end definitely justifies the means, unless the means is a massacre.

]]> http://oktobeginwith.com/blog/2009/06/26/the-iranian-protests-and-new-media/feed/ 0 http://oktobeginwith.com/blog/2009/05/28/the-new-role-of-journalism/ http://oktobeginwith.com/blog/2009/05/28/the-new-role-of-journalism/#comments Thu, 28 May 2009 00:36:50 +0000 Tom Dougherty http://oktobeginwith.com/?p=4

For this article to work, you need to agree with me from the outset. The role of journalism has changed. People understand articles just from the first paragraph.

Ok, everyone on the same page? No? Let me explain.

People are smart. Watch most people reading a newspaper, and they almost seem to glance over everything. It’s not because they’re skim reading, but more so because they read the headline, and then the first few sentences.

We are at a point when everyone understands how a newspaper article works. The pyramid structure (most important information first, and then the lesser info further down) has made it possible for everyone to digest the main crux of a story, and then move on. Sure, if the story interests the person, they will read the whole article. But to get an understanding of the news, no more than the first few lines are needed.

If you’ve gotten this far into the article, it’s obviously interested you, or you needed a little bit more information to understand my point. Some people will have simply read the first paragraph. If they agreed with me, they’ll move on. And they’re idiots.

If you discuss this post with someone who is “smart” (i.e. just read the first paragraph), they will be able to tell you the point of this article. If you probe them further, however, you can explain that they were insulted halfway through.

But I’m not trying to insult them. I’m proving a second point. Most of the time, but not all the time, an entire article needs to be read from start to finish.

When it comes to simple news items, it isn’t necessary to read to the end. But when it is an opinion or comment piece, or an article that a journalist has included some sort of editorial opinion, it is almost always necessary to read to the end.

And if you get to the end, you know a hell of a lot more about the article than many people. But you could have also spent that time on something more important than a little diatribe about the changing role of journalists. Because in the end, it didn’t address the headline.