This story took some time; I had to rewrite it after going all misogynistic on Lisa Wilkinson’s ass (almost literally). You see, in hindsight (pun intended), it is all entirely my own fault. I got emotional about emotions, which is pretty fatal at times. I made the number one error, I took at face value what I should not have, we all do this in time, we will all remain to make that mistake, it makes us human. You see, I considered Lisa to be her own brand of Journalist as we see the aftermath of the Martin Place events, which was the biggest error of all. She might have been a journalist at some point, but now she is an entertainer, her reading the news does not make her a journalist, she is reading events on the morning show. So when my stomach turned on her over-emotional dragging event of interviews of the relative of victims, I took out my own dictionary and the initial (never published) article was the result. And in that light, let’s be clear that Karl Stefanovic is not innocent either, he might not have said the words, but sitting next to her, we get that what hits both goose and gander.
Yet, like some, I was able to rectify my views before the damage was done, but it is important to mention the events none the less, because it should affect you the reader too.
You see, we all have an allegiance, and we forget that the Channel Nine Morning Show only has allegiance to the ratings and the advertisers, no matter how they pour that batter, it is all about the money, which takes, as I see it, journalism out of the equation.
So what was this about?
Well, there was a hostage situation in Sydney, which is now taken out of proportions by pretty much any party who gets a say in the word. There is a dangerous precedent here and as I see it, the jo0urtnalistical branch is not standing up to give fair and balanced information. That is weirdly enough done by Russel Brand in ‘Russell Brand The Trews (E212)‘ (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ8ZYAvWTxo). When we start relying on comedians to give us actual news, you know that we are all in trouble!
The only issue that Russel got wrong is the response that Rupert Murdoch had, you see, I saw the disgust all over the net, but THIS is the cost of doing business, this is the face of revenue. In addition we see the headlined from the Daily Telegraph and other papers. Headlines are all about the masses who do not read. Now we see issues on bail laws and on hate sheikh. Yet, these places of publication are no longer about true journalism, this is about product that is for sale and it is a lot easier to sell it to an emotional mass, then to a level headed person.
Now, we see how emotions can be used for good, if you doubt that then look at the sea of flowers in Martin Place. People feeling for the victims, it is clean, it is pure, but it needs there, the press is pushing this into new directions. The interview of the partner of the victim was simple exploitation, it might work out for the victim’s partner, and that is fine by me, but I doubt whether he has any personal agenda here, he is getting over a shocking event and within 2 days the press was all over him for a story, which was all presented in the ‘awwwww’ voice of Lisa Wilkinson and that truly got my emotions rolling in a very negative way.
Yet, it does not stop there; there is a lot more, which is why Russel’s video news is such a gem to see. Around 1:50 we see a summary, the man was instable, other decent sources state that he was a self-styled Muslim Cleric, we see the Australian stating ‘he claimed he converted from Shia to Sunni Islam‘, in light of the news, I find any newspaper to be less reliable, but there is a clear issue, why was he painted ‘a terrorist’? It seems Russel had the same question marks I have, but I will take that road further down this story, where I will present the views and you can happily agree or disagree.
You see, here we get the first issue of allegiance. For this we need to look at ‘The silent minutes of the Lindt Cafe siege that beg many questions‘ (at http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/the-silent-minutes-of-the-lindt-cafe-siege-that-beg-many-questions/story-fnl2dlu7-1227161245948). You see, there are many question, but we are asking them in the wrong direction, which links to another article on 10 ‘failures’, which begs many issues to question, mostly the values of the reporter. The first one I have an issue with is ‘FAILED: SAVED FROM EXTRADITION‘, Iran has been seen as a place of inhumanity for a long time and Australia was not sending a person back on the alleged crime of Fraud, into the hands of the Iranian justice system, which has been regarded in more than one instance of being pretty non-existent, but now suddenly it is good enough to extradite a person for? It seems a little double standard to me. ‘FAILED: DROPPED OFF WATCH LIST‘ is the second one. The events in Martin Place were not a terrorist action, not by the standard we need to ‘hold’ terrorism, a hostage situation is an act of terror for the victims, but it is about the agenda of the transgressor. In that light there are two actual groups; Man Haron Monis is part of neither, as I see it.
Let’s take a look at these two groups for the clarity of it all. There is the aligned lone wolf and the non-aligned lone wolf. Now, here is the dangerous quote, by considering, a terrorist to be sane and balanced. They are seen as sane and balanced, as he/she is regarded by the people around them in their day to day dealing with them. They might not be noticed at all, until the penny drops and they go all out and all radical, often these people will have a decent degree, they are educated, but they will not conform to any ‘set standard of life’. In that regard Horst Mahler might be the most famous one of the lot, a man with legal degrees, Social democrat, socialist, he went from extreme left to extreme right, from Rote Armee Fraktion, he changed lanes towards the teachings of Mao towards the NPD. One could argue that it was his need to be in the spotlight, I believe that as his view on the world changed, so did his alignment. It is not clear whether his view in regards to the holocaust denial is anti-Semite in its foundations, or whether this view has other foundations, this article is not about that part and it would take a long time to go over the alleged evidence. In all this, we get a tainted picture form the press at large, in those days, the RAF called the press at large unreliable, what they attacked and what was ‘denounced’ as any truth in regards to the attacks on the Axel Springer press empire, is now to the larger extent known to be an absolute truth, a view that is only enforced by the acts of Rupert Murdoch and his empire of revenue building proclamations of events for profit.
So this non-aligned lone wolf could group with others, but as a singular person he/she is often a lot harder to track and even harder to stop. Even today, the intelligence branch is lacking options to find that person, the issues on data collection that is now being stopped to some extent will only make it near impossible for people to be protected from these attacks.
The second group is the aligned lone wolf. Now we can look at lone wolfs of ISIL, ISIS, Al Qaeda, but also Aryan, KKK and even the IRA. In some cases events by a single person, who idolised a larger group acted out. Even though we see those people as part of that organisation, it is not always a truthful link. Yet as I see it, they ‘believe’ that the view of such a group is the righteous one and as such they act out. This group is easier to spot, but it still requires access to large amounts of data to see whether these people are indeed lone wolves. The additional problem is the lack of data, these people tend to keep a lower profile and as such there is less direct data linking them, most data will be ‘indirect’.
Man Haron Monis is not part of either. He has been seen as self-proclaimed, should be seen as attention seeker that is acting out. The fact that he is painted as a terrorist only makes matters worse. If we paint any person with serious mental health issues with the T-word, we will not get anything done and whatever budget we think we need, will be regarded to be short by 1000% and still not yield resolutions, interestingly enough, I am now seeing a SMH article confirming this view (at http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/sydney-siege-man-haron-monis-humanitarian-and-terrorist-20141219-12ajn5.html). So the second claim ‘FAILED: DROPPED OFF WATCH LIST‘ was more than correct ASIO has other fish to fry, this was a police matter to some extent and until he did something wrong, there was nothing to hold against him.
So back to the list, I am not going to go over all ten, some are too ludicrous to voice, yet this one ‘FAILED: GIVEN LEGAL AID‘ is an issue, You see, in Australia we have legal aid, which is there for all of us, which included him and tax payers pay that bill, for all who need legal aid, so get over it already. By the way, the press at large have been hammering on too little legal aid for a long time, which makes this ‘failure’ valued at the going price of ‘a sizeable giggle’.
The one that really matters is the one they left for the last ‘FAILED: INFORMATION NOT SHARED‘, it is not an issue! Some data is not to be shared and it is safe to say that the press is the least reputable source to claim what needs to be shared (reason to follow shortly).
ASIO and ASIS will have data they do not share, it puts people at risk and it puts operations at risk. We only need to look at the case of Phillip Arantz to see the operational need of not sharing data, which goes into two directions, data that could end up being suppressed and data that could end up being exploited, both would be disastrous for both ASIO and ASIS. In light of Philip Arantz, was Police Medical Officer, Dr A. A. Vane ever held to account by law or by the press? Seems that the press was visibly absent, one could argue that additional investigations would be valid regarding the Crown Employees Appeal Board, there too, a lack of press visibility. At his death the SMH placed 533 words regarding his life, now compare that to the tens of thousands of words a loon with a gun in a coffee shop got, so information should not be shared, as we cannot trust where that information ends up (or not ends up).
As we move back into allegiance, we need to see that the hardest part is that exploitation works two ways, it gets power from events we see as good, like #illridewithyou where the people are acting out to protect the Muslim community form being unjustly attacked and the interviews we see on how sorry we all feel, yet in that second instance we see that there is almost no news given regarding the 132 Muslim children slaughtered by the Taliban in a real terrorist act. How interesting that this news was hardly reported on. Yet, allegiance goes a lot further and is not just about terrorism. You see, allegiance is more and more about big business and advertising.
Whether the story is painted in light of ethicality as we see in FIFA, we must question why certain events are brought forward to such an extent. Consider the updated article ‘FIFA ethics investigator Michael Garcia resigns in relation to World Cup bidding process report‘ (at http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-18/fifa-ethics-investigator-michael-garcia-resigns-in-relation-to-/5974852). I wrote about it a few times, when it all started ‘Sacking the editor?‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2014/11/14/sacking-the-editor/) and ‘Any sport implies corruption!‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2014/03/19/any-sport-implies-corruption/), now we see that the ABC reports on the following parts “Garcia says he lost confidence in the independence of the ethics committee’s adjudicatory chamber following a statement issued by Eckert, based on Garcia’s still-secret report, in November” and “Garcia, who formerly served as chief federal prosecutor in Manhattan, had appealed against Eckert’s statement, saying it contained misrepresentations, but that appeal was ruled inadmissible by FIFA on Tuesday“, so we get intentional misrepresentation as stated by one person. The fact that this report is kept a secret is also a problem, especially in light of the claims by the Sunday Times, who still needs to be held accountable for their statements. We see all matters of allegiance, but allegiance to whom, or to what. Not unlike many, we want to know what is done to us. In a video statement by Joseph “Sepp” Blatter (at http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/dec/19/fifa-agrees-publish-michael-garcia-report-world-cup-bid-qatar-russia), we see at 1:54, where we hear ‘football is still the game of the world‘. Is it? It seems more and more that football is big business because many watch it. That has been at the centre of all this and as we see statements of misrepresentation by FIFA and the press at large, we must ask ourselves, what games are they playing? That light becomes a lot brighter when we consider the independent article (at http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/first-coca-cola-now-sony-as-sponsors-turn-their-backs-on-fifa-is-it-finally-game-over-for-the-qatar-world-cup-9882688.html), it seems that the issue (as I reported in my previous blog), diluted return per advertisement as the world cup would be held in Winter, because of temperatures, we see a shift on how some ‘threaten’ to walk away. You see, the stance of Sony is quite nice, but when they are confronted with the danger that FIFA 17 and onwards not getting released on PlayStation as EA could be confronted with Microsoft demanding exclusivity for FIFA games, should they start sponsoring, how many soccer fans would bail on their PlayStation? Let me be frank, there is no evidence that this will happen at all, but is that risk so far-fetched? FIFA games have been going strong since before 1998 on many systems, if PlayStation becomes the one ‘leave one out‘, their advantage will be truly gone and they currently do not have that much advantage left.
So here we see the picture of allegiance, that what we perceive to be (journalists towards their audience) and what it actually is (journalists adhering to the need of big business), yet in that same light we are a slave to the allegiance of our own emotions, that what we fear it is (the ISIS flag in a coffee shop with people under threat of death) and what is actually shown (a black flag with letters we cannot read).
When we see that articles are used, and changed (as we see the Google search), then to read the text not to include that part, we see, as I see it, an intent to misinform the public. The press deciding to rely on the push-button called fear to change public opinion, whilst any proper journalist would have correctly reported on the fact that a Shahada flag (the one that was used, apparently comes in two versions, black with white letters and white with black letters, a simple view of contrast. The text is “There is no god but God, Muhammad is the messenger of God“, a simple religious expression, a very Muslim expression. Most of us Christians have so many flags, is it that far-fetched that the Muslims would have a flag? And as we misuse our flags, is it not conceivable that one deranged Muslim would misuse the Shahada? Why was this not clearly mentioned in so many articles?
As I see it, allegiances are here, to some extent they should be here, but the one the press seems to invoke is a dangerous one, especially as they are not held to any account for the proclamations they make in light of ‘the people have a right to know‘, to some extent they do, yet they also have ‘a right to not be misinformed‘, a part that many players remain silent on.
Where do you stand, and what is your allegiance?
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 