"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story."
That seems to be the unofficial motto of the Weekly Economist Magazine - especially if, like me, you think that actions speak so much louder than mere words.
Two days ago (May 26, 2011) I published my first blog here at wordpress.
- In the PREAMBLE, I spoke of the tragedy of Australia's history of Great Constitutional Swindles - including our woe begotten Constitution that asserts itself as a foundation for democratic institutions and practices, such as the separation of powers of the branches of Government, when the reality is that Australians were swindled into receiving a concentration of powers (the fast track to tyranny) with all important roles in all three branches of government stacked 98% (parliamentarians), 99% (Ministers of Crown and Senior Bureaucrats) and 100% (Judges and senior judicial officers) with members of the ruling lawyer class.
- Today, 98%, 99% and 100% of our Governmen (and Governwomen) are 4th and 5th generation lawyers, lineal descendants of the ruling lawyers who, er, 'framed' our Australian Constitution in the late 1890s.
- Unlike the founding forefathers of the United States of America (who were polymaths and not purely, mostly, but only incidently lawyers) our Australian founding forefathers seized up for themselves the structures and controls of our federal system of greater government.
- Australia's founding fore-law-fathers swindled us Australians out of our basic civil, political and other human rights (1215s Magna Carta, 1688's UK Bill of Rights, or an English or Australian equivalent of the USA's 1776 Declaration of Independence or the USA's 1791 Bill of Rights (The First to Tenth Amendments)).
- To the enrichment of subsequent generations of the ruling lawyer class, our 1890s federal fore-law-fathers swindled us out of a historic opportunity to address some of the previous century's human and political and social and economic wrongs, and set Australia on a path towards becoming an even less democratised society, whilst spinning a merry jig of propaganda and rehetoric to pretend and convince us that we were (and always were and will be) a shining light amongst the world's best praticing democracies.
Yesterday (May 27, 2011 at about 8.00 am), I became aware via the Australian Broadcasting Commission Breakfast News Bulletins of a special report published yesterday in the Weekly Economist Magazine out of the United Kingdom under the title "No Worries".
- The article is accessible via the Economist home page - http://economist.com .
- Here is a snapshot of what The Economist has to say on its homepage:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From The Economist's Homepage - http://www.economist.com/
Australia's promise
With two decades of unbroken growth behind it, record prices for its minerals and an insatiable market on its doorstep, Australia can afford to be carefree. Or can it?(10)
- With a bit of self-belief, Australia could become a model nation(37)
- After 20 years of success, reform is a hard sell(3)
- An interview with the author
- More in Asia
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday (May 27, about 1.00 pm) I posted to the Economist my comments (about 2,500 characters or half the maximum allowable limit) on their article.
- These were automatically posted on the Economist site, as the 4th set of comments on the article, under my nickname of JamesJohnsonCHR.
- The 5th person to comment, under the nickname of "Hubris before the fall" posted 4 sentences commenting on my comments, but without commenting on the original Economist story at all.
Yesterday (May 27, from 1.00 pm up until about 11.00 pm yesterday evening) I tweeted links to the Economist articles, together with links to my comments, via twitter - as http://www.twitter.com/JamesJohnsonCHR .
Today (May 28, 2011, at about 6 pm) I became aware that the Economist had taken down my comments - binned them. The Economist's "moderator" has also deleted the comments on my comments posted by "Hubris before the fall". Of the 24 comments that have escaped The Economist's censorship cuts, they seem to be mostly about Mongolia, Serbia and China - places that are somewhat distant from Australia and one would think therefore not nearly as on title as my comments which were censured.
Today (May 28, 2011, at about 7 pm - here and now)
- For the record, below are, word for word, an exact replica of the comments that I posted at the Economist website, my observations on the simplistic "No Worries" story.
- Thank goodness for the power of http//:www.twitter.com and http://www.wordpress.com , so that I can both report this act of Economist censureship, and I can repost my original comments, word for word, back in the public domain.
- I wonder how often in times gone by, and in places like Australia today, where the mainstream media exercise enormous klout, freedom of expression and freedom of speech can be simply snuffed out via a failure to print (a letter to an editor) or a failure to educate (keeping those who might protest without the education or the tools of pen or paper or phyiscal safety, from which to print their protests).
- If my criticsms of The Economist (which j'accuse as being an active bastion of anti-FreeSpeech, and j'accuse of the corrolary of being an organ for the promotion of Orwelian NewSpeak and Poolean UnSpeak) are unwarranted and unfounded, then I stand to be criticised for making them.
- I note that it is to The Economist's credit that my comments were published first and moderated after - though I do wonder how long before this process is reverse.
I hope that Truth will continue to find a way to express itself, no matter the adversities to be overcome.
My comments, that were deleted by the Economist, are below:
COMMENTS BY JAMESJOHNSONCHR It is lovely to see @TheEconomist putting Australia on the front cover and headlines of its world famous magazine. Of course we 22M Australians have been in the world headlines for most of the past decade(s), most recently compliments of the latest in a long and growing line of Aussie whistleblowers, @TheEconomist's own, award winning, @JulianAssange_.
Australia is not a "Happy Country." We are in the world headlines for all the wrong reasons. We are not a "flourishing democracy, one of the oldest in the world". Quite the opposite in fact. As UK Prof Niall Ferguson's 2003 "Empire: How Britain Made The Modern World" and Aussie Prof Peter Botsman's 2000 "The Great Constitutional Swindle" amply testify. Ditto the true stories and writings of Ned Kelly and Matthew Brady, and Peter Lalor (the 1855 Eureka surviving, Aussie-transported Irish Political Dissident's son turned colonial parliamentarian, after whom my Australian Federal Electorate is named).
Australia has never come close to being a "democracy". Immediately consult pp 194 - 200 of the UK's @theGuardian's Steven Poole's 2006 epic "Unspeak" if you think that Australia might be a "democracy" or a "meritocracy"). Orwellian "Newspeak" and Poolean "Unspeak" have reached their, er, global and historic "peaks", in Australia's broken parliaments, our broken media, our broken bureaucracies and our broken lawyers' court rooms and tribunals.
Australia is a 1st rate nation, run by a 5th generation of 4th rate ruling class lawyers - a reality that almost breaks through the surface of the skin of facts elegantly displaced in these @TheEconomist special pieces.
So, I applaud @TheEconomist's energies and intentions. But I would love to see this special feature revised with less (unawares) artificial sweetener to political correctness, and more of the bitter political reality.
My @wordpress blog http://jamesjohnsonchr.wordpress.com/ could be a sensible starting point to begin sweeping away domestic and world delusions of what and who drives our unLucky, unHappy, Sorry and Worried Nation, and how and where they are driving us.
James Johnson
Independent Federal Candidate for Lalor
Constitutional Human Rights Advocate
Exiled Political Dissident
Solicitor and Barrister of the High Court of Australia
(Celebrating 20 Years of Legal Practice 1990 - 2010)
No comments:
Post a Comment