YA Future of Journalism summit

Trevor Cook via cover it live. http://blogs.crikey.com.au/trevorcook/2008/11/26/future-of-journalism-summit/

Reading through this, looks like old-school journalism needs all the help it can get …

10:03
TrevorCook:  Well here we are at another forum on the future of journalism / media etc
10:04
TrevorCook:  Personally, I’m not convinced that anyone has too much of an idea about what the future might be, how could we when things are changing
10:07
TrevorCook:  Big issue here is about who will fund other people to do journalism; Prof Phil Meyer from North Carolina (on the big screen) reckons maybe charities will do it; some in the audience think public funding here might be the go
10:08
TrevorCook:  Margaret Simon (Crikey) is working on setting up a foundation in a university to fund public, or independent, journalism
10:09
TrevorCook:  Idea is modelled on some american experiments
10:11
TrevorCook:  Meyer also thinks newspapers should focus on local public affairs journalism
10:11
TrevorCook:  Simons also says niche media will replace mass media
10:13
TrevorCook:  Of course, I reckon, it all depends on whether there is a market for it and if entrepreneurs come forward to exploit these opportunities and perhaps there are easier ways to make money
10:14
TrevorCook:  Meyer reckons decline of legacy media and rise of niche media might threaten the consensus that democracy is based on, Simons agrees, I reckon that’s a complete BS argument

Cover It Live replay here

Non-human animal gifts

The philosophical disconnect between animal and human rights, aid and development organisations becomes particularly evident around this time of year when charitable organisations run Christmas drives which feature animals as gifts. There would no doubt be strong grounds for defence from human rights advocates and aid organisations wherein, for example, pigs and other animals are defined as traditional currency. For some animal rights advocates the use of intelligent or otherwise sentient creatures is never acceptable on the basis that killing any living creature is unacceptable, whereas for others there are grades of acceptability which relate to quality of life. These often dissect across lines where at one end might be  intensively factory farmed animals, through so-called organically farmed and free-range animals (the “happy meat” position), to naturally expired animals such as road kill, and at the other the absolutist position. Ethicists might look at the human advocating arguments in terms of cultural relativism – that tradition and custom do not always provide particularly sound arguments upon which to base action. If we extend the justifications of these cultural practices, how much of a leap is it to the justification of practices such as human genital mutilation or honour killings, also based on tradition and custom?

This extends also into the environmentalist platform. In the 2004 election Bob Brown invited a Murdoch reporter to join him in a meal of steak and veg. Brown at the time was being hammered by the Murdoch press on the Greens’s drugs policy. It’s interesting that Brown should use the consumption of meat as means to signify normalcy. A more recent example would be the call from Ross Garnaut for a move for kangaroo meat to replace non-native animal meat. While this would dramatically reduce levels of CO2 production there is little debate about the nature of how the huge number of kangaroos, something in the order of 175 million, might be killed humanely.

Refugee numbers

As of December 31, 2005, the largest source countries of refugees are the Palestinian Territories, Afghanistan, Iraq, Myanmar, and Sudan. The country with the largest number of IDPs is Sudan, with over 5 million. According to UNHCR estimates, over 4.2 million Iraqis have been displaced since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, with 2 million within Iraq and 2.2 million in neighbouring countries.^[4][5] At least 60,000 Iraqis are losing their homes and becoming refugees every month.^{[6] [7]}

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees

The 10 commandments of B-society

1. The daily rhythm of each individual is genetically conditioned by heredity. Society needs to be structured to support a diversity of daily rhythms.
2. We are calling for an uprising against the tyranny of early rising, and for a better world where a diversity of daily rhythms is acknowledged and respected, giving us the opportunity for a better quality of life, more productive working time and major socioeconomic gains once we no longer take up the same space on the same roads at the same time.
3. We are working for equality between early birds and night owls.
4. We are working for a more flexible labour market. Each individual’s daily rhythm should, as far as possible, govern that person’s working life.
5. We are working for the introduction of collective agreements for early birds and night owls at negotiations for labour market agreements.
6. We are working for the establishment of day nurseries, kindergartens, primary and secondary schools as well as universities that open between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m, at least.
7. We are working for more research into daily rhythms.
8. We grant ”B-certification” on www.b-productive.dk/eng to businesses, who allow employees to work according to their own daily rhythm, work rhythm and life rhythm.
9. We are working globally for a better world that supports a diversity of individual daily rhythms, working rhythms and life rhythms.
10. Imagine how differently society would have turned out if the creators of the world had been night owls!

http://www.b-society.org/node/86

Bob Brown’s office

Who is running this show? A call for $3850 comes out less than 24 hours before deadline. Surely some NOTICE would get better results? A little PLANNING? Then again, who knows? There’s a lot of leverage to be made from urgency. It’ll probably be a raging success …

Dear friends,

The Olympic torch will make its way through Canberra TOMORROW and it is a chance for us to send a peaceful message of support for human rights in Tibet, following the brutal crackdown by the Chinese military dictatorship in March.

We need your help to skywrite ‘FREE TIBET’ over Parliament House during the torch relay. It will cost $3850 (including carbon offsets).

Please donate now and join the many Australians supporting the people of Tibet and His Holiness the Dalai Lama as the Beijing torch makes its way through Canberra’s streets

DONATE to tell Beijing you support a FREE TIBET!

etc …

Buying indulgences C21 style

Where’s Luther when you need him.

>>

Dear Des,

As the Prime Minister arrives in Beijing for talks with the Chinese President and our TV screens fill with images of protests surrounding the Olympic Torch, GetUp is establishing an urgent fund to support peaceful organisations standing up for the rights of Tibetans.

Click here now to donate and in doing so you may be thanked personally by the Dalai Lama.

Minority rapport

Parliamentary government is simply a mild and disguised form of compulsion. We agree to try strength by counting heads instead of breaking heads, but the principle is exactly the same… The minority gives way not because it is convinced that it is wrong, but because it is convinced that it is a minority. James Fitzjames Stephen, Apostle?

Late capitalist mash up

Gramsci’s general point appears to have been confirmed: all complex industrial societies rule by non-coercive coercion, whereby political questions become disguised as cultural ones and as such become insoluble. (Stacy Corngold 1996: 33). Clark 2003: 230.

Hitler’s got straight edge

“One can be a non-smoker, a teatotaler, and a vegetarian, and yet still be Adolf Hitler.”

– Karl Barth on Der Fuehrer

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/cultures/straight-edge-faq/section-44.html

Sure, but Eva and the Church?

Baldelli, ethical capital

The degree of ethicality of any given society is to be measured inversely by the degree of force it exhibits or on which it relies, that is by the number of its murders and executions, of its punishments and compulsions.