Yup we have all done it, we tend to filter. The horny (especially teenagers) want to talk, chat and video whatever to the members of the other gender (well, most of them anyway). We filter by the needs we have, business needs, personal needs and artistic needs, we filter. There is for the most nothing wrong with that. Yet it also tends to keep you in a little box. I come from the previous internet era, I never got into Napster but I loved Audiogalaxy. I had it so I could listen to music when I was travelling and it opened up doors. I learned about the Corrs, Bond, the Dixie Chicks, Linkin Park, Orbital and a few others. It grew my CD collection by leaps and that made me happy, in an age where my work kept me from MTV, Audiogalaxy showed me other venues of music. I forwent the filter and I learned about and got to appreciate bands I would never have considered. Filtering is not all bad.
Yet what happens when filtering goes overboard in another direction? Today I learned a new word, I word I should have been aware of but I do not remember hearing it. The word is ‘Femicide’ and it is not a good word. It was Al Jazeera that made me aware, the article ‘Rage boils over amid Argentina’s unrelenting femicide crisis’ (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/24/rage-boils-over-amid-argentinas-unrelenting-femicide-crisis). It got my attention in the first as it was about Argentina and my mother was from there. In the second it was the by-line “Femicide of 18-year-old Ursula Bahillo pushed thousands into the streets of Buenos Aires this month to demand action”. In this there are two parts, the first is “About 87,400 results” (when we look for Ursula Bahillo) and the second part is that the big newspapers are missing on the news search result on the first page. A Spanish version from the BBC is at the bottom of the page, no Washington Post, no NY Times, no Times, no Guardian (the list goes on) and it sickens me for another reason. You see, one hour ago the Guardian gives us ‘Princess Latifa letter urges UK police to investigate sister’s Cambridge abduction’, some princess gets the news on optionally being abducted and whilst Al Jazeera reports “Nearly 300 femicides were reported in the country in 2020”, other newspapers keep us in the dark and these idiots demand money from Facebook and Google, whilst not informing us? I see this as one of the clearest ‘What the Fuck?’ moments of the year.
I never felt comfortable bout honour killings. I understand that it exist and in those countries there is an issue, I am massively against that setting in other nations. I cannot convict it as I am not Muslim, yet outside of Muslim nations it is an issue, yet femicide should not be ANYWHERE and the fact that we are kept in the dark by most papers is a larger issue, but I will let you worry about that. It kind of intersects with ‘Australia urged to follow allies in denouncing China’s repression of Uighurs as ‘genocide’’, the fact that genocide is happening and someone needs to ‘urge’ Australia shows that we are not as evolved as we think we are. By the way, the first 5 pages of that search shows no Australian papers at all, as such should they be allowed to exist? That is a more serious question than you think. If the ACCC are all about media laws and the need to blame tech companies, in this my message after seeing ‘ACCC chief claims victory after Facebook standoff’ to Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair Rod Sims will be “Sir, I consider you to be a fucking joke! You are hereby responsible to make sure that the events around Ursula Bahillo are to be seen in EVERY Australian newspaper as per immediate. If you (as it seems) champion discrimination, you need to be openly told this”, my issue here is that Microsoft was left out of the media consideration, they were waiting all their resources on their Azure cloud and now that we see “Microsoft will ensure that small businesses who wish to transfer their advertising to Bing can do so simply and with no transfer costs. We recognise the important role search advertising plays to the more than two million small businesses in Australia” (source: Microsoft) all whilst we see western media absent to the plight of Ursula Bahillo and hundreds more shows that the media was never to be considered any options (if the Leveson report was not enough evidence). As such, how much action did the UN take to the Femicide cause? I know they have done some work, yet when I see ‘United Nations asks UAE for proof that Princess Latifa is alive’ all whilst the Google Search “Ursula Bahillo United Nations” gives no real links on the western media, why is that? That is even beside the fact on how active UN essay writers became against the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, they even went so far to push for issues regarding cyber crimes on an American Industrial (Jeff Bezos) all whilst the presented evidence had several shades of debatability. As I see it, we need larger changes and if the media relies on political bitches (as one might say) to do their revenue work for them, they will need to be held liable, yet I reckon that some editors will cry like little bitches and point towards ‘freedom of the press’, I wonder how long it will take for someone to consider that ‘accountability of the press’ is also a matter that needs consideration. Al Jazeera brought more to the surface than some media players are happy with. Consider your paper, or their website (whichever it is) and look for Ursula Bahillo, how many articles did you find? What we are shown matters, whether is be Femicide in Argentina, persecution of Uighurs or any other news. As I personally see it when we filter by gender and the filtering agent is the media we have lost control and the insane are at the helm of a ship called sanity. That’s merely my $0.02 on the matter.
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 