Global Warming conspiracy theoryNow you know.
This theory claims the science behind current environmental changes - as popularised by Al Gore in the film An Inconvenient Truth - was created for financial gain.
Some believe that governments are using the global warming "myth" to raise taxes and restrict competitive US businesses in Europe - or that it is a United Nations ploy to create a one-world government.
Barring last minute technical hitches, from Monday I'll be blogging from Asian Correspondent. Beck is moving into the mainstream...The best of luck to JF Beck for his future at Asian Correspondent, regardless of who is funding it.
"Gun bloggers"?Considering that Pure Poison, Ziegler's blog, exists as a lame Lefty response to Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt, Australia's gun bloggers, his comment is hilarious (not to mention exceedingly inane).
The Lefty whine-fest that is Pure Poison is never going to be as successful as Blair and Bolt.
Uruguay has become the first country to provide a laptop for every child attending state primary school.President Tabaré Vázquez presented the final XO model laptops to pupils at a school in Montevideo on 13 October.
Over the last two years 362,000 pupils and 18,000 teachers have been involved in the scheme.
The "Plan Ceibal" (Education Connect) project has allowed many families access to the world of computers and the internet for the first time.
Now that's an education revolution. And no Windows for these laptops. Free and easy Linux instead.
"We're in the grip of an epidemic of comfort as the enemy of Art. Painters are jumping out work hoping to become the next Ken Donne. Writers aren't crafting books but churning out self congratulatory blogs which are nothing more than a shrine to their raging narcissism."More videos from the Festival Of Dangerous Ideas here.
rod_benson : That's not a scythe. THIS is a scythe.
Colvinius : King Harold decides who will come to this country and the circumstances in which they come.
wolfcat: Want to live to 30? Ask me how
Colvinius : I subscribe to the Albigensian Heresy and I vote.
clubwah : A dog is for dinner, not just for Christmas
Colvinius : Save carbon emissions - don't burn heretics, drown them
CristenTilley : Not happy, Joan
Colvinius : My dad went to sack Jerusalem and all I got was this lousy bottle of holy water
rod_benson : No king will live in poverty by 1066.
clubwah : Jesus loves you. But if you love him expect to be burned at the stake
rod3000 : I Support Our Veterans of The Crusades
rod_benson : I crusade and I vote.
zombiemao : Kevin 1507
clubwah : I hunt and I'd vote if it weren't for the feudal system
rod3000 : Hot Oil Disarmament Now!
clubwah : Swords don't kill people, people do
rod3000 : I (heart) Magna Carta
Should I really be censoring such opinions? Should it really be an indictment of me that I don’t? Won’t it be said that the more I censor comments, the clearer it is that those I let through are the ones I endorse?So as you can see, against my duty, as I perhaps arrogantly perceive it, to allow as free a discussion as possible, there is my ego and my self-interest in protecting my reputation. I should also admit that taking off the comments function should free up more than 10 hours of every choked week. What’s more, reading and checking those comments that I can get to can eat at my optimisim as well as my time.
You should see the stuff we must delete - or, rather, you shouldn’t.
Much there in the way of threats of violence against those you target that you thought you should pass onto any of our intelligence agencies? Or the police?
This is what I’ve been wrestling with in this wretched week.Of course, it's all about The Idiot. Not about the people, the scientists, activists, journalists, community workers, he continually holds up for vicious ridicule and slandering by the worst of his droogies.
If Rudd really wanted to show compassion he would back the audacious plan of the Christian Democrat Fred Nile and go into the people smuggling business.
Hosting a meeting yesterday at NSW Parliament House for Christians from Egypt, Iran and Iraq, the upper house MP said he was worried about the plight of Christians in the Middle East, who were desperate to come here and make good migrants. In Iraq, says the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need, there are only 400,000 Christians left, down from 1.4 million in 1987.
Devine doesn't point out, of course, that the vast majority of the one million Christian who've fled Iraq in the past two decades did so after the start of the War On Iraq, a war Devine so miserably backed, and promoted.
Australia has a special responsibility for the Iraqi people, and from a self-interested viewpoint, Christians are likely to settle more easily into a Christian country than Muslims.
Yes, it's true, young Muslims, particularly the males, hate all the things that many Australians love, like rugby league and fast food and loud cars.
And Devine is right, Australia must be a Christian nation. After all, we're currently fighting in two wars.
"It's a desperate situation," said Nile. "They're being told 'convert or die'."
They are in Iraq, in particular, thanks to the War. Devine :
Seeing how free and easy the Government has become with boat people, Nile has hatched a plan to bring a boat of 2000 Christian asylum seekers from Indonesia to Australia. He wants donations and he dares the Government to stop him.So basically, war-shattered Christians? Come on in. War-shattered Muslims? Eh.
Dave Gaukroger at Pure Poison :"In newspapers, the Murdoch media empire has responded to the crisis of advertising by proposing to transform the online world in the same way that cable transformed television - by making consumers pay."
But what happens to quality journalism when its reach and audience are limited in this way; and what will Australians expect of the public broadcaster in the next decade?
This speech will be closely scrutinised by the ABC’s commercial rivals who are developing plans to place sections of their content behind paywalls in the hope of replacing revenue lost due to decreasing advertising rates and diminishing circulation. Both James and Rupert Murdoch have singled out public broadcasters as an impediment to their plans, not surprisingly it’s going to be hard for them to charge for content that organisations like the ABC and BBC are giving away for free.On Twitter, Scott offers this short intro to his speech :
@abcmarkscott - Looking forward to the AN Smith tonight at Melbourne Uni. Here is where we start: http://bit.ly/2m86IcThe link takes you to the poem, Fall Of Rome, by WH Auden :
The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.
Hey! Not all bloggers live in caves. Some do, yes, but by choice.
At New Matilda, Jason Wilson takes a look at :
Murdoch's Chorus Of Complaint
.
Kevin Rudd last night attacked The Australian as "right-wing" and less than objective, particularly on the issue of climate change."If you cite your source as The Australian newspaper, I simply say this: (It is a) free country; every paper can express their point of view -- the editor of The Australian has said that he edits a right-wing newspaper -- and so he does," Mr Rudd said.
"Let us not pretend that it (The Australian) would seek to present itself as an objective source of information. It opposes the government's actions on climate change, and has done so consistently.
"That's their democratic right; we have a free press. And so they should; that's a matter for them."
The editor-in-chief of The Australian, Chris Mitchell, responded last night: "The actual quote referred to The Australian as a centre-right paper but the PM is loose with his verballing these days."
....the BBC has decreed that its comedies are not to be ''unduly intimidatory, humiliating, intrusive, aggressive or derogatory''. John Howard Davies, who used to run BBC comedy, pointed out that this is the sort of absurdity that happens when a committee decides guidelines. An individual exercising editorial judgment is far preferable, especially if that individual has been chosen because of his or her connection with the real world, and what makes people laugh in it.
I have occasionally thought that I used to find programs put out by the BBC funny because I was so much younger when I saw them. However, watching re-runs of old comedy programs, I realise I was wrong: they were, plainly and simply, very funny. The famous Fawlty Towers episode in which Basil insults the Germans fails every one of the new guidelines. It is racist, intimidating, humiliating, mocks Spaniards, Germans, and the mentally ill, and commits other offences too numerous to mention. It is also dementedly funny, even after repeated viewings over 30 years.
After 70 or so years of influencing and shaping the definition of the national sense of humour, the BBC now seems to have forfeited its ability to do that.
I don't know what, indeed, there will be left for us to chortle at.
It makes me realise that my wife is right when she says that once you get past the age of 40, there isn't really anything on the BBC for you. Except Gardeners' World, of course: and we should make the most of that until someone realises how much it discriminates against those who don't have gardens, and who might feel humiliated by the lack of one.
ABC managing director Mark Scott will this week attempt to hit back at mounting criticism...note : "mounting criticism"
....of the public broadcaster's role in the internet space which commercial media companies say is threatening their business models.
So, the mounting criticism is coming from "commercial media companies."
Now there's a surprise.
The debate is heating up...
The debate is heating up in the pages of The Australian, who are now trying to convince an overwhelmingly skeptical public that they should pay to read Murdoch media news stories online.
The debate is heating up after Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corporation (owner of The Australian), again urged media companies to adopt online payment platforms for news at the World Media Summit in Beijing.
One of the biggest stumbling blocks to creating a new model is taxpayer-funded content appearing free on websites such as those of the ABC and BBC.
Taxpayers getting their news for free from news sites that their taxes pay for? Fucking outrageous!
Rupert Murdoch is just plain terrified.
"We find ourselves in the midst of an information revolution that is both exciting and unsettling," Mr Murdoch said.
Anyone else feeling unsettled by this information revolution, by the greatest free exchange of information, art and knowledge in the history of mankind?
No?
Said Rupert Murdoch, who's now losing billions :
"The presses are now silent at some of the world's most famous newspapers -- they were supposed to report on their societies, but somehow failed to notice that those societies were changing fundamentally."
So this Great Media Visionary is telling us that newspapers are going out of business because they failed to notice the dramatic changes erupting across the societies they are reporting on?
What's the problem here? As Rupert Murdoch said back in 1989 :
"If someone goes bust, too bad."
Back to Digital Rupert 2.0 :
"The Philistine phase of the digital age is almost over."
Really? You think so?
"The aggregators and plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content," he said.
But will the Murdoch media pay for all for the content they "plagiarise" from other news media they do not own, along with the reams of content they find for free at Facebook and Twitter, and lift without credit from Digg, Reddit, TMZ and dozens of other independent blogs, aggregators and alternative news sites?
Fuck No.
Mr Murdoch said if media companies "do not take advantage of the current movement towards paid-for content, it will be the content creators....who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs will triumph".
I've written ("created") more than 2 million words of free-to-read blog content in the past four years (not including the content I've kleptomaniacised) and the only price I've paid is spending many hours doing something I love, making a whole lot of new friends and developing deep interests in subjects I probably would have never cared much about at all if I hadn't felt the drive to write about them here, and at Your New Reality.
Anyway, enough of Digital Rupert's hilariously 20th century opinions.
Let's get back to evidence of the "mounting criticism" as claimed by The Australian :
Chris Wharton, the chief executive of West Australian Newspapers, which is also examining online charging for its news, said the ABC was "the elephant in the room in this debate".
So, we've got Rupert Murdoch and Chris Wharton. And that's it.
And unfortunately for Rupert Murdoch, he's no longer the biggest fish. He's more like a lumbering whale being vigorously pursued by a million little fish, constantly nipping away, slowing him down, diluting his influence, subjugating his once formidable power and control.The debate over charging for online news content intensified again last week after a number of independent research studies showed this to be an immensely unfavorable strategy amongst those surveyed.
As Australia’s largest online publisher, ninemsn is frequently asked about our own business strategy when it comes to revenue generating streams for our news product. For the record, we do not intend to charge for our online news content.
As premium, innovative and differentiated as our news product is however, introducing a charge for our audience to consume it is just not part of ninemsn’s game plan…but nor is this really what the “paying for online news content” argument should be about anyway.
At ninemsn, we firmly believe an advertiser-funded model is what Australian audiences expect and accept when it comes to the consumption of online news....it’s a model that’s proven and tested…and if it continues to be available as professionally produced, freely and easily as it is now, audiences will continue to vote with their “feet”.
Charging audiences for online news content they can currently access for free is like putting a toll booth in the ocean…and it’s a big ocean.
The Greens would rather send Australia back to the Stone Age than use common sense....
“I don’t know what planet the Greens are on, but by the look of their ‘Safe Climate Bill’ they look like they’re lost in space,” Senator Fielding said.
“If Bob Brown and his hippy friends really believed in their cause they’d ride their bikes to Parliament House instead of using the Commonwealth’s petrol-guzzling V8s.
“If we did what the Greens propose Australia would no longer exist because there’d be no industries left to drive our economy."
“The Greens’ proposed 40 percent reduction in emissions would cripple our economy and boot thousands of jobs offshore.
“The hypocrisy of the Greens beggars belief with the way they carry on about the environment yet show no evidence of doing anything about it in their personal lives."
“The Greens should either practice what they preach or just shut up and go away.”
Further proof needed? Here's the headline Fielding chose for his press release, in all screaming caps :
Fielding better watch himself. Rupert Murdoch has been ranting like a loon (or like someone who's lost a few billion dollars) about the evils of "content kleptomaniacs" recently. If Fielding's going to lift so much content from Andrew Bolt, he may be in big trouble :GREENS PLAN ECONOMICALLY LAUGHABLE, FOOLISH AND LUDICROUS
"(the) plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content."But can you copyright political propaganda?
How very, very interesting.Family First Senator Steve Fielding is tired of being hectored by hypocrites:
From 1 July to 31 December 2008 Greens Senators spent $164,240 flying around the country.
“The carbon footprint the Greens leave behind jet setting across the country is just another minor detail they forget to include when they campaign about lowering carbon dioxide emissions....”
(No link yet to press release.)
The leaders of two of the world's major news organizations said Friday that it is time for search engines and others who use news content for free to pay up.It'll be interesting to visit this story again in three or four years and see what's happened.The comments from Tom Curley of The Associated Press and News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch come as the media industry struggles in the Internet age. Many news companies contend that sites such as Google have reaped a fortune from their articles, photos and video without fairly compensating the news organizations producing the material.
"We content creators have been too slow to react to the free exploitation of news by third parties without input or permission," Curley, the AP's chief executive, told a meeting of 300 media leaders in Beijing.
"Crowd-sourcing Web services such as Wikipedia, YouTube and Facebook have become preferred customer destinations for breaking news, displacing Web sites of traditional news publishers," Curley said. "We content creators must quickly and decisively act to take back control of our content."
He said content aggregators, such as search engines and bloggers, were also directing audiences and revenue away from content creators.
"We will no longer tolerate the disconnect between people who devote themselves — at great human and economic cost — to gathering news of public interest and those who profit from it without supporting it," Curley said.
Murdoch also told the opening session of the World Media Summit in Beijing's Great Hall of the People that content providers would be demanding to be paid.
"The aggregators and plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content. But if we do not take advantage of the current movement toward paid content, it will be the content creators — the people in this hall — who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs who triumph," the News Corp. chief executive said.
The AP and its member newspapers contend that unauthorized use of their material is costing them tens of millions of dollars in potential advertising revenue at a time when they can least afford it.
The AP's revenue is expected to be around $700 million this year, down from $748 million in 2008, in part because of reductions in the fees it charges newspapers and broadcasters, whose advertising revenue has been dwindling as more marketers shift to less expensive or better-targeted options online.
Murdoch and Curley were speaking to 300 representatives from more than 170 media outlets from 80 countries at a meeting that will look at the challenges and opportunities the media face from the Internet, changes in technology and the world economic crisis.