Tweet of the Month

BACKGROUND

Over 4,598 retweets in less than 24 hours.

The Guardian, 15 April 2016:

Students pepper-sprayed by campus police at the University of California at Davis have reacted in anger at the “vastly inappropriate” and “insulting” decision by their university to contract firms to systematically scrub mentions of the story on the internet.

The university is being accused of censorship after quietly seeking to hide web references to a widely reported incident in which police sprayed student activists from the then-nascent Occupy movement four years ago.

The photograph and video went viral across the world, prompting a major backlash against the California university and its chancellor Linda PB Katehi, who was accused of using heavy-handed tactics against peaceful activists Students are once again calling for Katehi’s resignation.

Details of the attempt to remove references of the pepper-spraying incident were revealed by the Sacramento Bee, which reported that UC Davis hired a communications firm on a $15,000-a-month contract with a goal of eradicating “references to the pepper spray incident on Google”, including “negative search results” for Katehi.

The information was obtained through a Public Records Act request and is part of a broader investigation by the paper into Katehi’s affiliation with private corporate boards.....

Peace personified......

A Yamba man and his dog found at NBN Weather Shots:

Quotes of the Week

Everyone in the government knows that the past couple of weeks have looked messy; that it was naïve not to realise that the tax debate would be out of control as soon as state officials were briefed; that there should have been a better plan for taking control of the debate back; and that the idea of setting up a photo opportunity of the Prime Minister and Treasurer leaving the building together was a disaster. [Journalist Laura Tingle writing in the Financial Review, 7 April 2016]

The Panama Papers expose offshore companies controlled by the prime ministers of Iceland and Pakistan, the king of Saudi Arabia and the children of the president of Azerbaijan. They also include the names of at least 33 people and companies blacklisted by the U.S. government because of evidence that they’ve done business with Mexican drug lords, terrorist organizations like Hezbollah or rogue nations, including North Korea and Iran. [ The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, 3 April 2016]

It is hard to remember a government that has gone into an election campaign so ill-prepared to persuade voters to give it another chance.

[Journalist Lara Tingle in the Financial Review, 14 April 2016]

Political Cartoon of the Week

Cathy Wilcox

UNSW Phillip Baxter College residents are sooo sorry they were caught in the act *WARNING: Offensive Language*

Established in 1966 Philip Baxter College is named after UNSW's first Vice-Chancellor who laid the ground work for the university to become the world class institution it is today. It is the largest of the Kensington Colleges and housed 211 student residents and 7 resident academic staff according to The Kensington Colleges website.

On 12 April 2016 ABC News reported this behaviour by a group of Baxter College students:

Students at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) have held a protest after a video emerged of a group of young men from the university's Baxter College singing an offensive song while on an regular "Boys Night Out".

In the video, the young men are heard singing a call and answer song referring to women as "little red foxes" and how they would "shoot them in their boxes".

I wish that all the ladies

Were little red foxes

And if I was a hunter

I'd shoot them in their boxes

I wish that all the ladies

Were buns in the oven

And if I were a baker

I'd cream them by the dozen

I wish that all the ladies

Were holes in the road

And if I was a dump truck

I'd fill them with my load.

UNSW said they were "appalled by the sexist and demeaning attitudes and behaviours" directed towards females in the chant.

The university said it had taken steps to investigate the incident and meetings involving college residents, student representatives and the UNSW SRS Women's Collective were convened on Monday night.

James Dunn is house treasurer of Baxter College and was part of the Boys Night Out.

He admitted he probably took part in the chanting, but now realised it was inappropriate.

"The video is pretty appalling," he told 7.30.

"As a leader of this college and me being a part of the group that was likely in the video, for me it is really personal and I have no idea why I did it.

"I'm sort of condemning my own actions at this time and the actions of everyone in the video."

Mr Dunn said he just accepted the behaviour as part of the Baxter culture when he first moved from his country town for university two years ago.

"I walked into the culture that is Baxter and was taught these chants as part of the culture that we have here and something we do as a night out, as a whole college both males and females," he said.

"It has been ingrained in many college societies for too long that those things can be gotten away with."

When reading the new item two points come to mind.

One is that the University of New South Wales has the lowest female to male student percentages of all Australian universities at 46.1 per cent.

Two is that it is highly likely that the apology printed below is merely code for We’re sorry we got caught bellowing out our misogyny at the top of our lungs on a bus during “Boys Night Out”.

Mr. Denmore: "Do keep up now"

The Failed Estate, 3 April 2016:

To be fair, political media is broken because politics is broken – or at least what we call politics – the charade that takes place in Canberra or any other world capital each day featuring people and parties who don’t really believe in anything anymore, but making sure they posture and pontificate in a way that suggests they do. And the media, having so much invested in the semblance of a left-right, blue-red, coke-pepsi contest, is forced to play along with the whole silly game.

The rest of the population senses the breakdown. And not just in Australia. This is a global phenomenon, reflecting the end of a 35-year era in which neoliberal capitalism looked to have destroyed all other contenders. Politicians of the nominal left and right swallowed the consensus whole, leaving them to fight ridiculous and infantile ‘culture wars’ to justify their own sorry existence.

But ironically “the market knows best” people don’t seem to have figured that the wider population understands the issue better than the insiders do. The big problems we face are global in nature – climate change, people movements, adequacy of resources, the impotency of central banks, the dislocations wrought by “free” trade, the rise in the power of stateless corporations at the expense of people, the encroachment of “markets” into every aspect of our lives and the power of well-funded lobbies that sell private interest as public interest and destroy the possibility of people-oriented change.

THAT’S why politics is broken. And THAT’s why the media does not appear to have a clue about what’s going on right now. Oddly enough, this is a much, much bigger story than whether Malcolm loves Scott.

Do keep up now.