BoltWatch

Dedicated to those who can tell the difference between A. Bolt and a nut.

Where Andrew Bolt's Deranged Polemic ... Gets What's Coming To It

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Bolt 30/11: Cricket, Nguyen and abortion
Bolt's articles today are not yet online, but I skimmed them at lunch and have a few responses.

The first article is a response to criticisms of our glorious Prime Minister for attending a cricket match on Friday at the same time as Nguyen's execution. But, asks Andrew, what do we honestly expect him to do otherwise? What precisely could he do at 9am on Friday to help Nguyen anyway? Answer: not much.

Fair enough, and exactly what I said myself on Monday. But Bolt goes further. Because a few Labor and Democrat MPs dared to question the PM - not to mention THAT PROPAGANDIST FOR THE COMMUNISTS, the ABC - Andrew thinks it demonstrates some great divide between conservatives and progressives: that the former actually does things, and the latter just wants to look like it's doing things.

Obviously, it's a bit of a stretch to reach this conclusion just because some federal MPs had a minor go at their political opponent, but that's not going to stop Andrew. If The Age and the ABC do something, then the left as a whole is entirely responsible for it!

Ah well, even if it doesn't actually make sense, he did manage to fill some column space with it. Which I suppose is the whole point.

Andrew's second piece is another in his abortion series. This series works as follows: Andrew defines the debate as being about late-term abortions, and does his best to ignore the broader issue. This is because late-term abortions are much easier to oppose than abortions full-stop. Arguing about the tragedy of aborted newborns is sufficient to gain him support from dedicated anti-abortionists, without ever having to argue the much tougher line that once a foetus is conceived, a woman is henceforth just an incubator for the next nine months. He'll hint at it, but you'll notice he never actually sticks his colours to the mast.

(A bit like his death penalty piece the other day, come to think of it.)

Was Andrew always such a wuss when he weighs in on big issues? Was he always content to just chip away at the edges, without really explaining where he stands?

Andrew. Mr Bolt. Is abortion ever justified, and if so - when? Is the death penalty ever justified, and if so - when?

I'll even go first, to show you what actually holding an opinion which you're prepared to debate and defend looks like. The following are my opinions on these two, admittedly difficult, issues. Until the foetus is capable of surviving outside the mother, I'd argue abortion is justified. Once it could survive without her, I'd argue it is not (save if her life is in danger). The death penalty, on the other hand, I would strongly argue is never justified. Abortion is about women not being forced against their will to be incubators. The death penalty is about the state, with all its flaws, killing people. There is no inconsistency between permitting one and opposing the other.

Anyway, Andrew - that's what professing an opinion you're willing to defend/debate/possibly modify (if someone is able to convince you otherwise) ...looks like. Obviously if this were an opinion column I'd go into more detail explaining how I've come to these conclusions, but it isn't so I won't.

I guess we can debate my opinions in the comments if you want. Although, being BoltWatch, it would have been nice if the eponymous Herald Sun opinion-writer had actually given an opinion in his columns we could discuss instead. Sigh.

- posted by Jeremy @ 1:27 PM |
Friday, November 25, 2005

Bolt 24/11: "Fascism puts Left foot forward"
Today, Bolt tries his hand at historical revisionism:

Fascism is in fact an ideology of the Left, as Hitler (the Nazi Socialist) and Mussolini (the former editor of Italy's official Socialist newspaper Avanti) showed.


Sigh. Not this hoary old chestnut again.

People like Bolt have been trying to redefine "leftism" as "totalitarianism" for the last fifty years. Because in their eyes, "government" is by definition a scary, authoritarian thing, which must have as little power as possible to stop it RULING OVER US WITH AN IRON FIST.

And, well, maybe that's how they like to run government when they're in power. But it doesn't have to be that way.

The sort of government the left advocates, of course, is democratic government - not the tyranny of the masses the communists advocated, and not the tyranny of the military the fascists wanted. Nor do we want the tyranny of the richest one percent (which is what you get if you follow what Andrew supports through to its logical conclusion). We want government that truly democratically represents the people, and tries to ensure that all of its citizens have access to basic services and are not discriminated against for reasons of race, or creed, or sex.

As far as the "nazis were leftists" argument goes, it has its roots in the fact that the party Hitler ran called itself the "national socialists". Revisionists like Bolt like to emphasise the "socialist" part, and ignore the "nationalist" part - for obvious reasons.

The truth is that, whilst Hitler was very definitely a nationalist, his socialist credentials are pretty poor. Yes, he nationalised industries - but he didn't give them over to the workers. He gave them over to wealthy German industrialists. Seen Schindler's List? That sort of thing. All the corporations had to do was support the regime, and they were well taken care of.

Now, there's a fair line between today's ultra-conservatives, the corporations and the actual fascists. It's not like they're calling for war, or trying to crush dissent, or controlling the media or anything like that.*

But the simple fact is that fascism was an ideology of the right. It was about the strong dominating the weak. It was about power through might. It was about extremely conservative social values. It was not about co-operation, or sharing, or looking after the weak or marginalised in our society.

And anyone with a modicum of common sense knows that that those principles in that last sentence are what the left is constantly arguing in favour of; and that absolutely none of them were ever priorities of the Nazis.

(And the Nazis absolutely hated multiculturalism, just as certain modern conservatives do...)

You can only define the Nazis as "leftists" if you define "leftism" as "pro-totalitarianism". And if you seriously think that's what the left is calling for, Andrew, perhaps you need to get out of Southbank more. (Last Tuesday would have been a good opportunity.)

*Cough.

ps for a further analysis of the ridiculous "Hitler was a Leftist" line certain revisionists occasionally run, there's a pretty good analysis here.

pps as for Bolt's other effort today backing up the state opposition leader ("Don't Blame Doyle") - well, frankly, I couldn't care less. I'm sure it's very important to Bolt and his Liberal mates (which, from this piece, he seems to assume includes his entire readership), but I'm afraid I can't muster the enthusiasm to respond in any detail. I hope the Liberals do keep Doyle, because I'm fairly confident he's unelectable.

- posted by Jeremy @ 6:40 PM |
Thursday, November 24, 2005

Bolt 23/11: "Victoria: a state painted red"
Bolt's other article for Wednesday was a ridiculous attack on Victoria for not being as conservative as the other states. Or, as Andrew put it, succumbing to the "red mist":

...check Labor's two-party preferred vote in the mainland states. In the 12 federal elections from 1949 to 1975, Labor's vote was in fact highest in NSW eight times. But then a red mist fell on us and in seven of the 10 elections from 1980, Labor's mainland state vote has been highest in Victoria.
I'm not sure what the problem is, unless Andrew's simply saying that voting for Labor IS A BAD THING AND MAKES US BAD PEOPLE WHO SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF OURSELVES.

Which he is, of course.

LAST week's union protests confirmed one thing: Victoria is still the mainland's reddest state.

In Sydney, our biggest city, some 30,000 marched against the Howard Government's workplace reforms. In Brisbane, it was 15,000.

But in Melbourne the crowd reached 150,000.
Actually, it was 250,000, which you'd have been able to see if you'd been at your Southbank office and looked out the window. And again, I don't see the problem. I think this simply demonstrates that we're a state with a reasonable ability to see through the Howard government's bullshit spin on IR.

Seeing through which is of course a bad thing, if you're Andrew.

Which city has the most Left-wing of the ABC's local radio stations? The most Left-wing broadsheet newspaper? The university with a former Communist Party member as its Dean of Arts?

Melbourne, of course.

Why is this so? Why has this state adopted the Leftism of weakness? Is it time for a prime minister Peter Costello to remind us of the brisker philosophies of those once more accustomed to govern?
Have you ever read a more stupidly naked party-political diatribe from a columnist in a major newspaper?

Bolt doesn't even argue why any of these things are bad - he just assumes his readers are already on board.

Which is an interesting assumption, given that most of them will be Victorians...

- posted by Jeremy @ 4:49 PM |
Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Bolt 23/11: "Drugs and death"
Venomous spray from Andrew today in support of executing drug traffickers.

SPOT the true barbarians. Is it really Singapore, about to hang an Australian?

Or is it Australia, which keeps producing such gallows fodder for Asia's executioners -- criminals so greedy or stupid as to traffic in drugs?

What the citizens of Singapore must think of us, if they heard our raucous squealing, I blush to imagine.

They could hardly think us civilised for sending out so many young traffickers -- and then oinking in outrage when our neighbours catch and punish them.
Alright. There is no sensible interpretation of this other than that Andrew Bolt now endorses the death penalty for drug trafficking. If that's not what he's saying (and you'll note he's very careful in this article to only hint that it'd be a good idea, rather than expressly calling for it) then the above makes no sense at all.

We're not "oinking in outrage" because a drug trafficker is being punished.

We're outraged because the punishment is barbaric and excessive. It does not fit the crime.

I suspect Singaporeans tend to remember what too many Australians seem keen to forget -- crimes must have consequences. And the clearer, often the better.
Obviously, execution is not the only "clear" punishment available. So far, Andrew's article is the syllogism of "crimes must have punishments; execution is a tough punishment; therefore execution is appropriate". Obviously, that doesn't follow at all.

Is Andrew calling for Australia to start executing drug traffickers? If he is, he's at odds with pretty much everyone in parliament, and everyone who actually works in the courts.

I don't think he is, though - I think this is a dog-whistle article. He knows there are cranky bastards out there who can easily jump from "I don't like drugs or people who traffick in them" to "therefore we should start executing people". He knows that all the political leaders - not just, as he implies, from Labor, but also from the Liberals - are advocating for clemency in the Nguyen case. So partly, this is just Andrew being contrary.

But he's doing it as safely as he can. He's whistling about "tougher punishments" and "brutal simplicity" in such a way that he can retreat if he's called on it. This isn't really a new campaign by Andrew Bolt to bring back the death penalty, and he's not really nailing his colours to the mast as it might at first seem.

Under Singapore's law -- as you are told on the plane before landing or can read on signs at the airport -- trafficking in drugs means death.

It's a message that is brutally simple and Singapore ensures not even brutal simpletons can doubt it. It doesn't want people from countries with fuzzy notions of punishment -- such as ours -- thinking the death penalty applies only to those who are brown, or can't find a good lawyer, a friendly journalist, a bribe or excuse.

So those found guilty almost inevitably hang. Got the message?
In fact, those charged almost inevitably hang. In Singapore, prosecutors have over a 95% conviction rate. If that doesn't ring some warning bells...

Obviously those who've carefully considered for years the areas of crime and punishment might with Bolt's assertion that opposition to the death penalty is a "fuzzy notion of punishment", or, worse, that we don't mind it if the defendant "is brown, or can't find a good lawyer etc".

(This little dig doesn't even make sense, as - if you're going to bring up race - much of the opposition is from anglo-saxon Australians to the execution of an asian man.)

Many have indeed. A decade ago, Singapore was hanging more than 50 traffickers a year, mostly foreigners. Now the number is around single figures, and the city-state has one of the lowest crime rates in the world. You'd feel far safer walking down Orchard Rd in the evening than you would in our own Swanston St.
Not really. You certainly wouldn't want to inadvertently piss off a Singaporean policeman...

Ask Nguyen's twin brother, Khoa. In 1999, Khoa was twice convicted in the Melbourne Magistrates' Court of possessing and trafficking heroin. He received a sentence of just 15 months and of that served no more than nine. In 2001 he was convicted of affray over a savage gang brawl and given a suspended sentence. He's had some chances.

But did the family learn its lesson? Instead, Nguyen decided to pay off his brother's legal debts by smuggling heroin from Cambodia. Or that's his excuse and Australians do excel at them.
I see. Nguyen's brother's chance counts as one of Nguyen's chances. The fact that Nguyen had no prior history becomes muddied by the implication that he's responsible for his brother's history as well. Terribly fair.

Indeed, the Singapore Government has heard a few of the worst from Nguyen's lawyers and supporters.

There's the excuse that Nguyen shouldn't be punished much because he was just passing through Singapore. There's the excuse that he's since admitted everything. There's the excuse that he could help even more by nailing the Mr Bigs if he was kept alive. There's the excuse that his hanging will contravene "international human rights law" -- law no public has ever endorsed.
Just passing through is a pretty good counter to your argument, Andrew, that Singapore needs to do this to keep its streets "safe". That he's admitted everything isn't an "excuse"; it's a "mitigating factor". It's not being argued that an admission equals innocence, as Bolt disingenuously implies - it's being argued that someone who accepts responsibility and pleads guilty promptly should be treated more leniently than one who makes the prosecution fight the case all the way through and then loses. This is such a basic aspect of criminal law it's staggering that Bolt doesn't understand it. And yes, executing him is stupid if Singapore is actually interested in catching the people who are running the drug syndicates.

As for that dig about "human rights law" having never been directly "endorsed" by a public - it's been endorsed by our representatives. And the fact that it's never been directly put to us doesn't exactly undermine the principles being enunciated.

To which claimed human right is Andrew opposed, anyway? Is he going to give us a list?

Is it any surprise that the Singapore Government, having heard all this, decided, in the words of Labor's excitable foreign affairs spokesman, Kevin Rudd, to "tell us all to go jump in the lake"?

SO now Singapore must deal with our threats, too -- all so the drug trafficking brother of a convicted drug trafficker can evade the sentence for the crime for which he's been rightly convicted.

Federal Labor is demanding a formal diplomatic protest. Others insist on trade boycotts. Deputy Premier John Thwaites is smearing Singapore by calling its death sentence "barbaric".
Note that in Bolt's attack on MPs who have tried to obtain clemency for Nguyen, he blatantly, obviously, unmissably concentrates his attack on the ALP. He doesn't mention Howard, who's met with Nguyen's mother, or Downer, who's indicated today that there might be an application for an injunction after all.

I mean, I don't see the ALP figures' presence in this list as a badge of shame, but the point is that Bolt does, and he deliberately distorts the list to drive his attack home only against one side of politics. It's a pretty obvious example of how he'll use any excuse to attack the ALP and not the Liberals.

Barbaric? It is true that this deliberate taking of a life is extreme, and sinful to some of the religious. I'm against it for being so merciless, and for the disrespect it shows for human life.

Yet is the execution of a drug trafficker any more barbaric than, say, the late-term abortion of a baby, or the killing of enemy soldiers or terrorists? These lines aren't so crisply drawn any more.
Yes, the death penalty is bad. (Tick.) But maybe it isn't. (Tick.) READ EVERYTHING ELSE I'VE SAID IN THIS ARTICLE IF YOU'RE CONFUSED ABOUT WHAT I'M SAYING.

Honestly, it's a pretty dishonest piece. You can't write 800 words (I haven't counted) on how our failure to execute drug traffickers makes us "barbarians", and then give a cop-out of "I'm against it". It's just not credible. If you're against it, why are you arguing in favour of Nguyen's execution?

Most of us who have no religion are left with little argument other than that the execution of Nguyen is out of proportion to the crime. And that killing him will hurt more than it helps. We're arguing more about efficiency than morality.

No, Andrew. Those are not the only arguments against the death penalty. If you want some ideas, try Amnesty International's death penalty site and the Death Penalty Information Centre.

The death penalty doesn't deter. Worse, innocents are executed. In this case, it prevents Nguyen from giving evidence which could help catch the real ringleaders.

We are right to oppose it. And not for the wishy-washy arguments Andrew gives us.

So, lesson learned? Everyone clear? Or will we merely ramble on to our next drug sensation -- yet another Australian caught overseas with stash in hand. And his country in hissing, spitting uproar to find that some people -- not us, for sure, really, really do mean what they say when they warn: "Or else..."
Oh, we believe they mean what they say. It's just that what they say is brutal, and degrading, and wrong. And other than vague homilies about lack of discipline encouraging people to be naughty, you've weighed into this long-standing debate with nothing. You've offered no genuine defence of capital punishment. You've in fact pretended that you're against it, whilst ranting against those who, coming from the same position you claim to hold, oppose it consistently wherever it is practised.

The death penalty is either wrong in all circumstances, or it isn't. If you profess to believe it's wrong, you can hardly attack people for opposing it.

A woeful effort from Bolt, trying to have it both ways.

(I'll put up my response to his other article later.)

- posted by Jeremy @ 10:46 PM |
Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Bolt 18/11: "We're all winners"
Gosh. 279 comments. You must be waiting for a new post!

Problem is, none of Bolt's more recent columns have really been all that interesting.

On Friday he wrote on the controversial topic of how great it is that we won a place in the World Cup. "We're all winners"! he declared. Fair enough. Trite and flag-waving, but hardly particularly problemmatic. But the crux of his article was about how the predominantly non-anglo players' presence in the team demonstrated a strength of Australia - assimilation!

Andrew tried to draw a distinction between the non-anglo players in the "Socceroos" (which sounds Australia) and the non-anglo players in, say "Preston Makedonia" (which doesn't). The former is good, the latter is bad. The former is the "good" multiculturalism - assimilation, whereas the latter is the "bad" multiculturalism - "ghettoism".

And the way you can tell one is better than the other, is that the former finally won a game. If only the Socceroos had known that their victory would prove Andrew Bolt right in some tenuous way.

(Of course, if the players in the Socceroos had completely "assimilated" as Bolt advocates, it's unlikely they'd have been playing soccer to begin with...)

What else has he been writing?

He had a serve at Prof Stuart Macintyre regarding Arts grants, but frankly I can't be bothered getting into the spat. (If you're bored and want to respond, feel free to email me and I'll put it up).

And there was no Bolt column on Wednesday.

So, there we are. Anything interesting happening in his fora?

- posted by Jeremy @ 2:46 PM |
Monday, November 14, 2005

Bolt 11/11: "Losing is real life"
Bolt's column on Friday - "Losing is real life" - is a bit odd. It's either a vacuous truism that competition per se has virtues, or - if it has a real point - it's a go at anyone who proposes mitigating against the outcomes of pure competition. You know, the conservative argument that goes "why should I have to pay tax to keep people on welfare?" and "Don't regulate the market, competition will sort it all out for us."

Children see their idols lose on television, so society shouldn't try to make them believe that competition is wrong.

...So did hundreds of thousands of other children. So don't tell them our fading lies about competition - that there's no such thing as a loser. That it's is not worth the pain. That it's not how the world should work.

...Dan is a dreadlocked Queensland singer who made the finals of Channel 10's Australian Idol, and for some reason my youngest son adores him. Maybe it's the hair.

Whatever, he watched Dan sing to stay alive in the competition, and did a cha-cha on the couch with each show that he survived. Well, it all ended on Monday. Dan was voted off. Very good, but just not good enough, the viewers said. The judges were a bit shocked, but it was bye bye, dreadlock Dan.

...Yes, yes, I know it's shameful of me, even at the end of these Kumbayah times, to let a five-year-old wallow in a winner-take-all television competition. All my programming of the past couple of decades is screaming "troglodyte" at me.

After all, how hard have our more "progressive" unions and bureaucrats worked to convince parents like me to admire co-operation, not competition?


Andrew's setting up a bit of a strawman here. You can have both co-operation and competition, of course, where appropriate. We don't have to send our kids off on their first day of school with knives and a bloodthirsty pep-talk and see which survive. It is difficult to see co-operation (or, to use a preferred word co-opted by the conservatives, "mateship") as an evil, unless you define it as some kind of a hindrance to competition, and claim that competition is intrinsically virtuous. Which Andrew does:

For too long unions have fought to keep the award system that gives bad workers their best chance of earning as much as the guns, so that a Dan on award wages can get not a cent less than a Lee.


Andrew here appears to be defining "bad workers" in such a way as it equals "low paid workers" - because those are the ones who rely on award wages. They're the workers who are easily sackable and replaceable at managerial whim.

Which is, of course, the sort of social inequality which awards are supposed to address - give those without bargaining power some basic protections.

The interesting thing about conservatives and competition, of course, is that they don't actually believe in it themselves. Look at what the large corporations - the biggest advocates of "governments piss off and let the market sort it out" - do: if threatened by a new rival, they cut their prices until it's forced out, or buy it out: anything to remove real competition. Microsoft isn't the biggest software company in the world because it loves competition - it's the biggest because it knows how to remove it.

Further, the fundamental point of the free market system is that people with capital have more power than those who do not. And capital is not, of course, distributed equally at the start of our lives. Andrew's arguments against equality of outcomes are all very well, but he's forgetting the massive inequalities at the beginning. The "incoming" inequalities end up matching the "outgoing" inequalities very closely - merit is only a small part of what decides who are the "winners" and who are the "losers" in our society.

You see, we can't have people being told they aren't all equal, and especially when they aren't. Don't tell Dan he can't sing as well as Lee, or the even more talented finalists Kate and Emily. Might hurt his feelings. Might reinforce his social inequality.

The real allegory with society would be if one of them had proper training and the other didn't; if one had to wait tables while the other could take the time to develop his voice; if Dan, on being voted off, was sent out back to live on Centrelink.

There is one thing Idol tells us about society, though - it's that even if you are the most talented competitor, and you manage to win the competition, it'll be someone else who profits most from your efforts. A corporation, in fact. The prize in Idol is that you get to record your own album. Of songs that that Sony BMG selects. And the millions of dollars the compulsory video clip costs are taken out of your cut. Such that at the end, the Idol winners are lucky not to end up in debt.

Who wins? Sony BMG of course. It's not the talented person who fought their way through the competition.

So that's the real lesson of "competition" in our society. No matter who looks like they've won - it's really those who were up the top already.

UPDATE: There's another response to this article here.

- posted by Jeremy @ 8:03 AM |
Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Bolt 8/11: The threat is real
You're not going to believe this, but Andrew Bolt thinks the terror suspect arrests prove that he's been right all along!

Yes, complete vindication (as the Herald Sun's cartoonist Mark Knight sycophantically suggested with his "JWH as Winston Churchill" cartoon). John Howard is clearly completely and uniquely right about absolutely everything now.

Because what Howard's - and Bolt's - opponents have been arguing is that Australia is immune from any risk of terrorism. That the police are never going to arrest anyone, that terrorism doesn't exist, and that there's no such thing as Osama.

Er, actually, no, wait, they haven't argued anything of the sort.

What has been argued is that the risk of terrorism in Australia is extremely low. The police should be watching for it, and we should have counter-terrorist teams (as we do already) - but it doesn't logically follow that we must also endorse everything else proposed in the name of "anti-terrorism". For example, the arrests show how unnecessary the proposed "two weeks in custody without charge" provision is - the police have done just fine without it so far.

And we've argued that there are far more important issues right now - the IR changes that will affect every working Australian, for one.

What? The IR changes? But Bolt's not interested in talking about those. He's much more excited about potential explosions.

SO it wasn't a political stunt. It isn't about Iraq. And the threat of Islamist terror right here is more real than many pretend.

How real? If the police are right, they have saved scores of you from being blown up -- as people in Madrid and London were blown up.

1. If it wasn't a political stunt, why did JWH undermine the police investigation by giving the suspects warning last week, giving them time to destroy crucial evidence before they were arrested?
2. How does Andrew know that Iraq has nothing to do with the suspects' motivations?
3. Seventeen suspected "members of a terrorist organisation" doesn't make the threat as real as Andrew pretends, anyway. There are a crapload of things much more likely to suddenly kill us than terrorism.
4. More importantly, surely what the police have demonstrated is that they don't need any further of the proposed "anti-terrorist laws".

The rest of Bolt's rant is dedicated to bashing the evil "multiculturalism":
Have you finally had warning enough? Do you finally see the threat is so real that it demands real solutions?

At home, multiculturalism must go, and true integration promoted. Radical preachers must be kept out, or held to account. We must let in only Muslims with the skills and desire to adapt and thrive. We can afford no French-style ghettos here, including ghettos of the mind.

That's a huge leap from seventeen arrests, Andrew, surely.

A BROAD, the solutions seem clear, too, but hard. The countries breeding Islamist hatred -- and breeding the immigrants who overwhelm Europe -- must be hurried into freedom. As Iraq is already beginning to show, a free country does not turn its citizens into refugees. It gives them a future back home. A reason not to hate.


Hands up anyone thinking they or anyone else has much of a future in Iraq at the moment. And hands up anyone who thinks that the standard response to the current state of Iraq by its inhabitants is one of love and gratitude to the Coalition of the Willing.

All this will takes us years, even decades. Cultures are not easy changed, or assimilated. Meanwhile, it will be wise if we learn that some people really are so unhinged as to hate this country and want to kill us. We have been warned enough. It's serious.

Yes, there will always be a nonzero threat of terrorism. So you'll just need to keep voting for the Liberals and not paying any attention to anything else they do. (You can vote for Labor again when they prove that every single terrorist has given up. How is that even possible you ask? Who cares - that's their problem.)

Meanwhile, the Herald Sun dedicated almost all of its Australian news coverage today to pages upon pages on the raids. It devoted precisely none (that I could see) to the IR changes. (Andrew's columns have, significantly, also completely omitted any discussion of the issue.)

Parliament continues, of course, to hurriedly run through the IR legislation with a maximum of speed and a minimum of debate. It's not slowing down to concentrate on the terror suspect story. It's leaving that to the friendly media - and while our backs are turned...

Essentially, the suspects are in court now. Detailed media coverage can only prejudice their trials and make it more difficult for the prosecutor to obtain convictions. It's counter-productive. In fact, the only thing the blanket coverage achieves is distracting voters from what will be affecting every one of them with a job next year...

UPDATE: "catsidhe" has two responses to this article on his site, as well - here, and a slightly more restrained-for-publication one here.

- posted by Jeremy @ 11:14 PM |
Friday, November 04, 2005

Bolt and Marsden
Bolt's column today is an attack on proponents of the theory of global warming. I'm not an expert on the subject, so if anyone is more knowledgeable and would like to pen a decent response, feel free to email me and I'll put it up here.

In the meantime, here's a guest post by "Petal" responding to Andrew Bolt's recent forum comments about John Marsden, author of the well-regarded Tomorrow When The War Began series:

In my previous career a Head of English came to blows with our Principal. The Head wanted to study Colin Johnson’s “Wild Cat Falling” – a great novel with strong Aboriginal characters – but the Boss thought otherwise. “This is a Christian school,” he insisted. “There has to be some sense of redemption for the character.” The Head’s rebuttal was that the fate of the main character was pretty realistic for Aboriginal Australians, and therefore it presented a great opportunity to give our teenage students a powerful literary experience. But he lost, of course; and the school itself lost a fantastic Head of English a few months later.

And now, I’m starting to see a similar clash in the pages of Bolt’s forum. He seems to be picking a fight with John Marsden. I never got to teach John Marsden during my time as an English teacher, but my observations have always been that he is an author (and teacher) who is very much interested in teenagers. And by that, I mean what they think, and how they think. Some of his public comments have been provocative, yet they make sense: that parents should ensure that teenage boys have access to books and novels with explicit sexual language and description (words, OK? Not pictures), is one of the more memorable. After all, they’re going to try to find it anyway.

It appears that his novels are noted for their extreme material, yet are presented in an accessible manner. Death, violence and disfigurement occur, much as they do in much of the media popular with teenagers. The point is that teenagers are obsessed with this sort of thing. It’s a part of growing up. Ask any teacher who has marked children’s creative writing (and I’ve read thousands) and you’ll find plenty of senseless violence and killing. It’s quite obvious as to what’s on their mind.

But Bolt doesn’t see it that way. In his October 27 Forum, he dropped Marsden’s name ever-so-casually into one of his replies:

My poor son is having John Marsden's foul Rabbits read to him right now.

(What’s with him and the word “foul” anyway?)

At that stage, he didn’t give any hint regarding his disdain for the author, which goes back a number of years. For example, in 2001 he wrote:

“The implicit message from this man is that there is no parent or teacher - in any of the seven books of his which I've read - who emerges as a positive figure, to whom the child could go when in trouble. All the parents and teachers are evil, neglectful, untrustworthy. Behind all of them is Marsden whispering, "You can trust only me".

I think this is a very sinister message.”

And lo and behold, he got the response he wanted. “Melanie Irving” challenged him a couple of days later, to which he repeated:

His books offend me because several whisper to children that every adult (except Marsden ) is against them, especially their teachers and parents.

And again the next day, in response to a not-so-challenging letter:

"So Much to Tell You" is so sinister I urge any parent who mistrusts what I say about Marsden to read it before recommending any of his books to their children. But borrow it from the school or local library - don't reward him with a single extra sale. If you do borrow it from a school library, do not return it. Give them a better book in exchange.

You know what? I’m going to try it. And if the librarian whinges (like I’m really scared of a librarian) I can say: “Take it up with Bolty. He told me to do it.”

Seriously, though, I think we’re about to get a new Marsden article in Bolt’s columns. That, or an annoyed Marsden taking up the issue in the pages of the press. In either case, Bolt “wins”. In his own mind at least – but I guess that’s all that matters to him. He wants to be talked about, and will resort to all sorts of things for that to happen; including picking a fight.

- posted by Jeremy @ 7:49 PM |
Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Bolt and Abu Ghraib
Bolt in his forum today about David Hicks and Guantanamo Bay:

Andrew replies: Some scepticism here is wise. On that other hand, you should also acknowledge that the Abu Ghraib abuse was detected and announced not by reporters or some outside authority, but by the US Army itself, which then prosecuted the offenders. So a more moderate tone would not just be more persuasive, but fairer.


If I recall, wasn't the Abu Ghraib abuse exposed by photographs that were leaked to the press? It wasn't the US Army that broke the story.

And as for "prosecuting the offenders", sure it did. It prosecuted the stupid 20 year old soldiers who did what they were told by the CIA interrogators. They were told to "break" the prisoners, who were "terrorists" and "insurgents" and "unlawful combatants". But, as anyone who's paid attention has since learned, this wasn't a couple of idiot soldiers playing around - this was a deliberate policy from the Pentagon. Read the Abu Ghraib commander's book.

The real offenders weren't ever prosecuted, and that's because they were doing exactly what the Bush Administration told them to do. "The Geneva Convention? What's that? It's some piece of commie terrorist-loving freedom-hating UN crap, isn't it?"

Lovely spin from Andrew, though.

Oh, and he publishes without comment (except for an asinine "Thanks, Phil") a ridiculous defence of the crackpot "intelligent design" mantra which ends:
Richard Dawkins was unable to cite ONE example of an increase in genetic information, & if anyone would know, or could find out, it would be he. You may still believe naturalistic processes can give rise to new genetic information, but this will be a position based on FAITH, for it has never been demontrated & goes against (secular) information theory. Cheers.


Phil, phil, phil. Clearly you agree that processes of some variety give rise to new genetic information. You call the processes "God", but you have no evidence for this, either.

Meanwhile, scientists don't call the process "naturalistic". They don't need to give it a name that clarifies if God is or isn't involved, because it's not in the slightest bit relevant. God might be a helpful concept for you in dealing with the world, but it's not a helpful concept in terms of figuring out how and why things work. Scientists just observe that the process happens and make theories as to why which can be tested, observed and reproduced. That's how science works. That's how it is that you have a computer with which to email Andrew Bolt, because scientists developed theories of electricity, and electronics, and revised them and tested them until they figured them out.

If they'd taken your approach, they'd have simply said that electricity was caused by God's intelligent design and not bothered figuring out how and why it works, and we'd still be thumping around in caves.

Stop pretending that if we can't disprove God, then he must exist. It's impossible to disprove a negative. But if you're trying to convince us that your "God" theory is valid and useful, the onus is on you to prove it. Otherwise it's just as logical to demand that they start teaching Flying Spaghetti Monsterism in schools, too.

Anyway, I don't want to have a debate on intelligent design here (it's not the point of the site, obviously), but I remain astonished at the quality of Bolt's responses in his forum. "Why, I'm Andrew Bolt. I don't need to actually argue a point, I can just publish letters that replace the need for me to express my opinion on these sorts of issues, which might inadvertently alienate some of my readers. (Because I like to say I'm an atheist but simultaneously pretend to be on the religious people's side as well)."

Thanks, Andrew.

- posted by Jeremy @ 10:17 PM |

Portions of any work of Andrew Bolt are taken from his webpage at http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/, are copyright Andrew Bolt, and are reproduced on the basis of the "fair dealing for purpose of criticism or review" section 41 of the Copyright Act 1968. Other material is copyright by its various authors, which sort of goes without saying really.