Lingoism

Here are some new words that I would like to introduce into the Australian vernacular.

Dumbocracy: (n) Process by which disinterested and uninformed voters choose their leaders.

Fair Go: (n) Social equality afforded to those with fair skin.

Fuel Crisis: (n) Dilemma faced by motorists during a petrol price war as they try to decide whether to fill up now or wait and see if the price will fall further.

Homophone: (n) One who claims not to be a homophobe, but who sounds like one.

Idoluded: (adj) Pertaining to people with limited singing ability who audition for Australian Idol.

Media-ocrity: (n) Default level of quality aspired to by commercial television and radio. Formerly known as ‘lowest common denominator’.

Pod-estrian: (n) One who walks while listening to an iPod, completely oblivious to those around them.

Re-search: (n) Academic or scientific study based entirely on information sourced from the internet via a Google search.

Terrorist: (n) In the same way that a racist promotes unfounded fear of other races a terrorist promotes unfounded fear of terror. i.e. George W Bush is a ‘terrorist’.

Compluckwit: (n) Anyone who creates new words by merging others together for use in marketing, tabloids or blogs. Examples: Brangelina, TomKat, infotainment, pod-estrian, blog.

Fair Go Mate!

John Howard and Andrew Robb have decided that new Australian citizens should have to pass a test to demonstrate that they can speak English and have an understanding of Australian ‘values’, history and the concept of a ‘fair go’.

I hope they are planning to test their understanding of ‘hypocrisy’ too because I believe that is the number one ‘value’ being demonstrated by our leaders.

One can only assume that this current nationalistic push is a valiant attempt to keep the terrorists out. After all, terrorists can’t speak English and surely wouldn’t know anything about Australian values????

But what exactly are ‘Australian values’ anyway? I can only assume that Australian values are the ones that we demonstrate most often. With that in mind I suggest that we include these oaths in the citizenship ceremony:

”I promise to celebrate our multicultural society but fear and ostracise Muslims because Mr Howard and Today Tonight say they are terrorists.”

”I promise to fear invasion and attacks on our lifestyle but will endorse any unprovoked attack on any country that the USA points to and back the killing of thousands of innocent civilians.”

”I promise to care about natural disasters overseas and provide aid by the truckload… as long as a footballer or Australian tourist was killed. Otherwise I couldn’t care less.”

”I promise to prioritise sports over education.”

”I promise to jump on any bandwagon and follow any sport… as long as Australia is winning.”

”I promise to get emotionally involved with the plight of trapped miners, convicted drug smugglers, disaster victims and celebrities with cancer but instantly forget about them as soon as the next distraction comes along”

”I promise to claim all successful New Zealanders as Australian until they do something wrong”

”I promise to buy luxury houses, have babies and use credit to buy everything I want and put myself into massive debt but complain that someone should help me when I can’t pay it all back.”

”I promise to believe everything that Naomi Robson, John Laws and Alan Jones say because despite having millions of dollars and living in luxury they understand the plight of the Aussie battler”

and

” I promise to demand perfection from immigrants but mediocrity from everyone else, after all that’s the essence of a fair go”

Let’s just hope that the values test won’t be thrust upon the rest of us. I doubt many ‘real’ Australians would do very well in an Australian history exam and if faced with the idea of an English test I think most Australians would ask “Is Warnie playing?”

9/11

I can’t believe it is five years since the World Trade Centre attacks. It seems like only yesterday that the world sat glued to their television sets amazed at what they were seeing.

Since 2001 the world has become a very different place. The words ‘terrorist’ and ‘Muslim’ are now commonplace (I reckon I’d heard the word Muslim maybe five times in my life prior to 9/11.) The last few years have seen an increase in security, an increase in law making, an increase in fuel prices, an increase in military expenditure and my favourite, an increase in conspiracy theories.

Conspiracy theorists have always had a bad name. Their foil hat wearing, moon-landing doubting, UFO spotting ways opened them up to ridicule that tarnished the term ‘conspiracy’ with an inherent subtext of paranoid lunacy. They did have a couple of wins though. Oliver Stone’s film JFK changed many people’s minds about Kennedy’s assassination and The X-Files gave UFO geeks the chance to be cool for a short time. Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 also got people thinking. But still, mentioning a ‘conspiracy theory’ will doubtlessly be met with sighs of indignation from ‘realists’.

Psychologists claim that belief in conspiracy theories is actually an attempt to feel secure. The belief that a government can control so many people and events is actually more preferable to believing that the bureaucracy is incompetent and not in control of our wellbeing. The flipside of this is people who refuse to believe in conspiracy theories for exactly the opposite reason. They don’t want to entertain the thought that the government may not have their best interests at heart and may be lying to them.

Where do I stand? I try to remain rational and realistic. I know that in reality governments are made up of people and departments that would struggle to organise the tying of a shoelace. Self interest and corruption tends to weigh against organisation and unity. However I also understand that through the power of media voters are often mislead and lied too. Politicians even trade on their reputation as liars coming up with expressions like ‘core’ promises that are to be differentiated from election promises that they will break. I also know that very few things happen in this world unless someone is making money from them.

In a world where lies like ‘Saddam’s WMDs’ and ‘links to al Qaeda’ or ‘children overboard’ can be propagated and believed it is hard not to be sceptical when our leaders try to sell us a story. Especially when that ‘story’ seems to be playing very well to their interests.

And so we come to 9/11. A simple Google search will bring forth an insurmountable wealth of pages making all sorts of claims of conspiracy and government complicity. They range from sensible and rational debunking to fantastical and downright ridiculous speculations. It would be easy to just ignore it all and just believe the official government line.

Unfortunately I have this little part of my brain that kind of twitches when things don’t seem right. I can’t quite explain it but it is the same part that gives me bad feelings about people I meet who later prove themselves untrustworthy. And I have to admit when it comes to the events of 9/11, “I have a bad feeling about this”.

To try and come to terms with it all I took the position of a juror. That is, I will look at the evidence that is put before me and make a judgement on whether it seems credible or not. In this way I am not bound to believe any one source or any single explanation. I can simply look at each event and decide what it means. I won’t make unfounded assumptions. I don’t ask anyone to believe the same as I do and certainly don’t claim to have the answers.

The only conclusion that I have drawn is that there are some very worrying anomalies in the events of September 11^th 2001. Obviously I don’t want to turn this post into another conspiracy page but if you have time and want to start asking your own questions I highly recommend looking at these points in particular:

1. The way the WTC towers collapsed with special attention to the less often reported collapse of Tower 7. This link is one of many that uses physics to demonstrate the problems with the official story. http://janedoe0911.tripod.com/BilliardBalls.html or here

2. What got destroyed and who profited. http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/silverstein.html
http://killtown.911review.org/wtc7/collapse.html#cdi

3. How easy is it to fly a passenger airline into a building? http://physics911.net/sagadevan.htm

From my point of view these few aspects of 9/11 are the ones that don’t seem to have adequate explanations and aren’t ‘debunked’ effectively by any source that I can find. Granted, they all pose even more questions than they answer but so do the ‘official’ explanations. I understand if people don’t want to believe a conspiracy theory but isn’t the idea that a faceless group of foreign terrorists could elude security, plot and plan to hijack planes and fly them into protected airspace and accurately crash them into high profile targets and bring down two of the biggest buildings in the world in itself a ‘conspiracy theory’?

I will not speculate on who is responsible for the events of 9/11. As far as I can see there is evidence to incriminate all sorts of people. All that is known for sure is that planes were flown into the World Trade Centre and many innocent people died needlessly. If I had lost a loved one in such a disaster I would want to know the truth. I would not want to blame the wrong person and I certainly would not want the perpetrators to be allowed to go free.

There is no reason to involve yourself in the conspiracy theories or even ask any questions about it. But considering the fear that has been thrust upon our society since 9/11, the racism towards the Muslim community that is being encouraged and incited by our media and even our Prime Minister, the infringements on our basic freedoms that are being proposed by sedition laws and the degradation of the basic principles of law such as ‘innocent until proven guilty’ I for one would like to know that the War On Terror is directed at the real threats to our society and not some convenient patsy devised for the profits of a few.

I promise that next weeks post will be funnier. And that’s a core promise.