Seven precepts for disempowered people

A long day. To begin the last instalment of your say on the Carr thingo, my favourite email on the matter.

Despair, and seven precepts for disempowered people

by Robin Ford

Walking to work I was pondering a response to the John Wojdylo/David Makinson scrap over war on Iraq. I didn’t share your positive view of it. As I read their words it seems to me that Wojdylo despises the reflection that Makinson holds dear, and Makinson is in despair over Wojdylos single-minded drive for proper action.

A Myers Briggs categorisation of each would be fascinating. With such different emotional drivers I can’t see this providing much help to me in sorting out what I should do. A drag-em-out, knock-em-down fight, particularly if each believes in different rules, isn’t the way to enlightenment for onlookers (although it sometimes reconciles the protagonists).

All that fell away when I read about the Bob Carr interlude. When I think about what you have written recently, his attack and its style was surely to be expected, presuming that Mr Carr thinks you are significant. His response is completely consistent with the view you have come to hold of the man. And think of the police minister he has chosen. Your response on these webpages is impeccable; write how you see it, then print the source material. It impresses me, but then I’m among the marginalized too.

There is a link with the Wojdylo/Makinson scrap. Your attacks on Carr are Wojdylovian in their confrontational style, whereas your articles on Bali are Makinsonian in their open reflectivity. Carr has replied to your attacks by using the free edges that your open-ended reflection leaves for multiple, and invented, meanings. Dangerous stuff, open reflection.

So how should I respond to our current circumstances? You have given us some ideas in recent articles. It is time for a consolidated list of precepts so I dont overlook them in times of despair. Moses exemplified the idea. I need something to look at in hope. I’ve seen four possibles for the list:

* vote for people who meet the eye-ball test

* take your body, fragile though it might be, to protest meetings that you agree with numbers count

* write to politicians, with a pen

* keep up with webdiary, and similar sites of honesty and hope

There must be more, and perhaps some of the above are trite. Seven in total would be a good number.

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ONE LINERS

steve j spears:Mr Premier, If you think Margo Kingston’s a parody of a journalist, you’re in need of a looooong rest. She’s got the most balls of any hack in the state. Your job is to answer questions, not spread malicious lies. Get your shit together.

Robert Lawton: Bob Carr is obviously looking for an easy target and the pinko press = you for now it seems. No haters like Labor haters, are there?

Janet Fraser: I think that Bob Carr is using you to score political points and any vestigial respect I felt for him has vanished in a puff of political posturing. There are many of us who think like you do, Margo. You go for it!

Phil Knopke: I have just read your exchange with Bob Carr from todays SMH site. Seriously, why don’t you sue the bastard?

Cathy Bannister: Isn’t the Bob Carr outburst libel? Good luck with the suit.

Sean Hosking: The reknowned thinker Bob Carr clearly had a score to settle with you. It reminded me of my days in the playground at Maroubra public school. Not to worry. Your recent pieces for the SMH on the NSW government have been succinct, passionate and punchy. Clearly you’ve upset the right people. Keep up the good work. You’re helping to restore my faith in the press.

Emma Geary: Bob Carr is not fit to lead this State if he resorts to bully boy tactics as soon as the heat is turned up. I suppose you could take the ferocity of his attack on your professionalism as a compliment – he obviously felt threatened by your enquiries and has something to hide. I thought your coverage of the Bali victims was particularly sensitive and on rereading the articles I don’t understand where Carr is coming from. Keep up the pressure.

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CARR’S RIGHT

Richard Moss: If you say you have never written what Bob Carr accused you of, what precisely are the 7th and 8th paragraphs of your story of 14 October supposed to mean?

I interpret those paragraphs as implying that Australian tourism had adversely affected Bali and that this may have contributed to the circumstances that led to the bombing. While this doesn’t precisely amount to blaming the victims individually and personally, it is nevertheless significant, and typical, that one of your first reactions after the event was to find reasons why it may have been wholly or partly “our fault”.

I am unsurprised that there is an adverse reaction to you, particularly at that early stage, implying that tourists in Bali, including the victims, may have contributed to the circumstances that led to the crime.

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Geoff Honnor

Here’s what you wrote in the aftermath of Bali:

“I know little about Bali, and whether we’ve respected and nurtured the place we love to visit or colonised it with our wants. A friend in Byron Bay said Australians had taken Bali over, business wise, and that acquaintances with businesses in Bali were considering coming home before this horror. They sensed resentment, and felt a growing unease.

“Maybe part of it is the lack of services for locals. A completely inadequate hospital, for instance, so graphically exposed in the aftermath of the horror. Some people – foreigners like us, elite big-city Indonesians – make their fortunes. Have residents lost their place, their power to define it? Did the big money fail to give enough back to the people who belong there, whose home it is?”

I don’t think it’s totally unreasonable for Bob Carr to draw a “blame the victim” conclusion from that, on the evidence available . Any more, presumably, than it would be totally unreasonable for you to conclude that the government deliberately acquiesced in the deaths of 300 illegal immigrants, on the evidence available.

Or have I missed something?

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FIRST TIMER

Michael Cahill in Sydney

I haven’t written to you before, and I will admit to not agreeing with all of your views. However, the incident of the attack made against you by Bob Carr has me angry enough to write something.

I’ve watched the video several times and read the transcripts, and I cannot interpret Bob Carr’s actions as anything other than a deliberate tactic to derail the press conference.

Why is it that those in power both here and elsewhere in the western world are so afraid to ask what motivates the deplorable, inexcusable actions of terrorists? Why do we not distinguish between searching for explanations and blaming the victims?

Of course, widespread fear in the community increases support for the incumbents, and there is always talkback radio support for stronger police powers. For politicians, the mere mention of terrorism is a guaranteed way to demonise opponents or divert attention from issues they would prefer not to talk about. Bob Carr’s words are one of the clearest examples of this tactic in action.

My strong conviction is that we can’t fight terror with terror. To me, journalists who only repeat and amplify messages of fear are the real parodies. Please keep asking questions.

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WEBDIARY REGULARS

Hamish Tweedy

Do you believe that Bob Carr just invoked memories of the victims of the Bali Disaster to distract you from your line of questioning? If he did, Australian politics has reached a new low and if he did not then he badly misrepresented your article and owes you and the victims and their families an apology. For my part I almost have to force myself to believe the latter as the former is too disgusting to contemplate. Do think he realises what he has done?

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Peter Gellatly in Canada

I have not so far contributed to the terrorism/ Bali bombing debate on Webdiary, so let me preface this by saying my views do not line up with yours. So on this occasion I write to defend you out of principle, not likemindedness.

Based on the transcript of the Carr press conference plus your two October opinion pieces, I would say you have been defamed on two counts:

(1) your character has been impugned, and

(2) so has your professionalism as a journalist.

But please don’t bother suing; rather wear these slurs as a badge of honour. You must be getting to him (them?)!

By the way, as to the substantive matter of the discretionary misapplication of police powers, if I recall correctly here in Canada the ink was barely dry on the new federal anti-terrorism bill before a police anti-terrorist squad participated in a raid on a native activist group. Later, a police spokesperson refused to rule out use of the anti-terrorism legislation to bring charges under similar circumstances.

The point is, within every political administration and every police force there is inevitably a minority – however small – of self-righteous hardliners for whom the ends justify the means, and who regard the strict upholding of civil liberties as kindergarten fluff beneath the concern of tough practitioners. All broadsweep criminal code provisions must be carefully drafted with this in mind – to proceed otherwise is simply to invite subsequent abuse.

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David Makinson

Wanted to write in support. As you know I’m trying (and failing!) to cut down on my Webdiary habit, but I just had to read the Kingston v Carr saga.

If by including my humble scribblings you have been in any way further exposed to this expedient man’s despicable cynicism, I do apologise. This is what I mean about coming too close to something mean, nasty and permanently polluted.

As far as I know, nothing you have written even remotely “blames the Bali dead”. It is simply too astonishing a claim to be taken with any seriousness. I even wonder if you have grounds for a legal suit for libel or slander, but doubtless you in the media have to cop this sort of manure sweet. In the final analysis, Bob Carr, like most of his political colleagues, is a liar. And this is just another lie. Don’t sweat it.

By coincidence, I have been working sporadically on a piece for Webdiary about how the right (in which I certainly include Carr) invents preposterous positions for their opponents and then forces them to defend them. Don’t fall for it.

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SO WHO DO I VOTE FOR?

Hugh Driver in Sydney

I’m finding it very difficult to put my disgust at Bob’s responses into words. I’m no tort lawyer, but is defamation a possibility? If only we had the US interest groups that would fund that sort of litigation.

Who to vote for in the NSW elections? It seems that I’m sitting in a demographic which has become irrelevant to all major parties and is not worth courting. The policies of the major alternatives (eg the Greens) are, in my view, too unworkable and unsustainable for me to vote for. The same goes for many other dissenting groups which have arisen in response to current affairs in the last few years. Hopefully a sensible (well, sensible by my definition) independent will stand in my seat. Or dare I hope that some new, viable political party may arise? It seems unlikely.

I’m getting used to feeling powerless in democracy where I am out of step with the majority. The ALP will lose a lifelong voter in me, but I don’t think they particularly care. Perhaps I’m not aspirational enough.

Still, never give up. Best of luck.

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NOT IN ON THE JOKE

Karen Young

I think that many, many people agree with the right to protest, and to speak out about the atrocity that is our current dominant political and social perspective. I am hoping that underneath this arrogant, dominant, bullying business driven machismo facade, lies a rich vein of hope and peace within the global population.

I especially resent the headlines of the Daily Telegraph, feeding Government and business propaganda, as it does, to people, with headlines like, “…a bloody disgrace”, in relation to the protestors of the WTO conference in Sydney. It is not a disgrace to care about what is really happening. It is not a joke, to want to find a peaceful solution to this overwhelming pressure cooker, uneasy, business-dominated world conflict. It is not a joke to point out inconsistencies in current political rhetoric.

People that would risk, who care, who are not afraid of speaking out against fear, war, racism, environmental vandalism, intolerance to refugees, greed and who point out the madness of current rhetoric, are not a JOKE or disgraceful.

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STREET-LEVEL VIEW

David Burnett

A letter of two parts – sympathy and solidarity over WTO, and a question regarding the inner workings of the media at such times.

Firstly, I’m so sorry, Margo, that you have had to witness the brutality of today’s governors, both through the instrument of the police and by way of public vilification and humiliation.

I experienced the same fury and terror when 50 fellow hippies (including NZ Greens MPs), sitting singing on the road in the morning gloom, were attacked from behind without warning by armoured riot police on the second morning of Melbourne’s S11 protests. I suspect you would empathise with my experience that the boots and batons were far less brutal than the outrageous smears and bare-faced lies of police command, parliamentary representatives and ‘journalists’ both before and after the event.

The only consolation I can offer is that this experience at least allowed me to more fully know the enemy, and the true nature of the society in which we live. In the lead-up to the protest, it all seemed a bit of a game – tactics and counter-tactics, black bloc, green bloc, pink bloc, cheerleaders in drag, Trots and anarchists happily slagging each other off, everyone madly spinning and manoeuvring.

Even the stream of hysterical media coverage came across as a sign that we had got under their skin – and surely few punters would believe the transparent posturing of wannabe macho pollies, rabid shock-jocks and dour-faced police command.

But when the goons swooped, the batons fell, the horses charged, these childish illusions evaporated and I was left with one, crystal-clear insight – this is power. Not the voting, the lobbying, the letters to the editor, the tireless branch-work of your suburban politico, the cut and thrust of public debate. But big, strong men in body armour beating helpless people with sticks. Thus has it ever been, and we would be wiser (if sadder) to remind ourselves of this every day.

The great service that the wave of globalisation protests of the last few years has done is to reveal the iron fist inside the democratic glove, to remind us that even in the most enlightened modern state the fundamental roots of power are still the army and the police and the threat of the force that they wield.

Or, as a friend of mine remarked shortly after the death of a protester in Genoa last August, “We’ve learnt two basic lessons this year: first, the ones with the power have no intention of relinquishing it; and, secondly, if we push them hard enough they will shoot us”.

As for the way the media has presented such events – this confuses the hell out of me. Every journo I spoke to at S11 expressed their shock and disgust at the police tactics, yet the media outlets for which they reported universally ran with the police line of ‘urine-filled balloons’, ‘slingshots’, ‘marbles under horses’ etc (needless to say, all utter fiction).

As with last week’s events, the s11 media coverage was filled with images of police brutalising weedy-looking kids under headlines or voice-overs decrying the ‘violent protesters’.

My question is – where does this spin come from? I mean, who – specifically – did the spinning? The journo (not likely, from their on-the-ground reactions), their editors, the subbies, the media-company’s CEO? *Someone* wrote those words – who the hell were they and what was their agenda?

I didn’t see the SMH coverage (The Age ran a few pars and a ‘violent protester’ pic), but I would be fascinated if you were able to follow the paper-trail of a reporter’s account from street to presses and observe at which points the various agendas come into play.

Once again, Margo, thanks for your dedication and integrity – and take comfort in the belief that is at least better to know where we stand than to fool ourselves about exactly how welcome our participation in the process of government really is. It is only from this clarity that we can formulate an effective response.

‘Mad props’, as they say these days.

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