Andrew Bolt, Muslims and Australia

I don't read too much of The Advertiser when I'm not at Uni. At Uni I can get the paper for free, so I get it. The Internet has allowed me to get my news from sources like the BBC and the ABC (the Australian one obviously). If I go shopping I'll usually pick up a copy if there are any available, since sometimes it's good to get some idea of what is going on in the state.

Anyway, I seem to have missed something very interesting. It seems that there has been some debate about multiculturalism since David Cameron made his speech saying that it had failed and some people read an article by Andrew Bolt. I'm assuming that the Bolt article is this one.

Of course Andrew Bolt being Andrew Bolt has of course managed to tie this to Muslims because, well I don't really know, they... do... different things? It really is more a rant against Sheik al-Hilali and Muslims in general then actually discussing "multiculturalism".

The only real comment I want to make about the article is that "they teach funny sounds that aren't English" is not a reason to be angry at a group. Seriously, it isn't. Maybe Bolt is happy to live in a monolingual world but other people aren't. It doesn't mean that they're going to not speak English.

I honestly find this really ironic that The Advertiser decided to publish this. Islam has a pretty long history in South Australia. The camel drivers that were brought to Australia in the 1860's were Muslims. They transported goods through the outback to the various towns there and were vital to the development of the region. Of course they needed places of worship and built mosques. The first mosque was built in Maree around that time and the oldest mosque in a major city was built in Adelaide in 1888.

There have been Muslims in this state for about 150 years and clearly they've utterly ruined it. Oh wait, they haven't. They've been here living their lives peacefully and helping to build the country and there wasn't a problem.

Then we see everything change and all of a sudden they're a bunch of people who refuse to integrate at all, won't learn our language and want to destroy our way of life. That's not the case at all. History has shown us that it's quite the opposite.

I missed Monday's letters in the paper. I'm glad, however, that I got to read yesterday's. At least enough people who had their letters published showed that we aren't all morons.

Meryl Dorey on 2UE

2UE's Tracy Spicer "interviewed" Meryl Dorey, president of the Australian Vaccination Network over the British Medical Journal calling Andrew Wakefield's "research" as fraudulent. If you can't listen to the 2ue version, the audio can be found here on Youtube.

I say "interviewed" because it's probably better to describe it as a slaughter. Spicer slaughtered Dorey and that was that.

Refreshingly instead of allowing Dorey to pimp her website Spicer decided to just hang up.

If the Australian Vaccination Network sounds familiar that's because they were accused of harassment by the NSW HCCC. One of the results of this accusation was that the AVN was supposed to put up a nice big disclaimer saying, basically, everything that they write is biased as fuck and you shouldn't trust it.

Incidentally the disclaimer that they're required to have isn't on their website as of writing this post, you can check it here and if you happen to find it leave a comment.

So back to the interview.

Dorey seems to be living in some sort of parallel universe where what she thinks is correct. That, in my opinion, is the only possible way that when Spicer mentions that Wakefield's research has been discredited she responds:

No it hasn't

I can't think of any other reasons. Oh wait, I've though of a more plausible one. Meryl Dorey is some kind of moron.

Now there is a post up on Dorey's website that says some crap about something (seriously I don't really know), entitled "Andrew Wakefield - the Kangaroo Court has spoken. It mentions the interview and has a nice transcript. As a side note on the transcript the missing words that Spicer said between "...saying there is no link..." and "...misinformation" was "...and here you are on metropolitan radio spreading your...".

But when Spicer says:

Under the heading measles, mumps, rubella, she states that these are all non-threatening illnesses in early childhood.

Dorey has said:

(note from Meryl – I’m not sure what she is referring to. On the MMR page, I have a quote from Dr Peter Baratosy that says:

Measles was a common childhood disease prior to the introduction of widespread vaccination, and up until about 30 years ago was generally described as a benign illness. The difference today is that children seem to have become weaker due to drugs, pollution, vaccinations and poor nutrition” (Dr. Peter Baratosy)

Funnily enough when I went to the MMR page and clicked on the read more under "MMR" I found (albeit in magenta):

Unlike vaccination (which offers only temporary immunity), the natural occurrence of each of these diseases (all non-threatening illnesses in early childhood) generally results in lifelong immunity.

Now I added the bolding to the text there. Sure sounds like Dorey is claiming that measles, mumps and rubella are non-threatening. I guess Dorey is too disingenuous to mention that, or perhaps she's too lazy to quickly check what she wrote on her own website.

Looking over the comments on the 2UE website I'm pleased to see many comments that say that Dorey is an idiot. Hopefully the view that anti-vaxxers are unscientific fools can spread.

More Wikileaks

So this Wikileaks stuff is still going, and there are two things that I would like to mention.

The first is that Kevin Rudd, the current Minister for Foreign Affairs and former PM has gone on record stating that Assange shouldn't be blamed for the leaks.

And former PM John Howard has also stated something similar.

It's good to see that two people who probably won't have the most flattering things said about them (Rudd is a control freak - US Embassy, Canberra) and Rudd has said that he is providing consular support. It's good to hear that our country is actually doing something.

The other thing is this "insurance.aes256" file that Wikileaks uploaded about a year ago. Since Assange's arrest people have been speculating on what will happen to this file.

So I'm going to jump on the rampant speculation bandwagon.

I think the file contains one of three possibilities:

1. Nothing
2. Uncensored documents
3. Stuff that's really important for various countries

Personally I'm leaning towards #3. Wikileaks has most likely managed to get their hands on some pretty interesting documents that they haven't released for whatever reason (right now I'm guessing insurance) which could be really damaging. Perhaps it's a bunch of "plans to deal with Wikileaks" from various countries, who knows.

The reason I think #3 is that these would be documents that are potentially damaging now, but, when they become irrelevant could simply be released later on.

#1 is more of a jerk move. It might not be nothing, it could just be a text document that says "thanks for downloading this for us". And #2 depends on the nature of the uncensored documents.

I guess we'll just have to be patient and find out when they release the password.

Mr. Squiggle Dies

Norman Hetherington, the man behind Mr. Squiggle died yesterday aged 89. Mr. Squiggle was Australia's longest running children's show.

I loved watching that show as a kid. For those who don't know Mr. Squiggle was the man from the moon, who came and visited us in his pet rocket named Rocket and would draw these pictures from canvasses with squiggles and lines and dots. When he finished it was up to Rebecca, who was basically the token human, to orientate the picture correctly so we knew what it was.

As to the title, Norman Hetherington was Mr. Squiggle. As well as creating the show he drew the pictures and gave Mr. Squiggle his voice. To pretty much every Australian who watched the show as kids he was Mr. Squiggle.

Assange and Australia

Well the debate over Wikileaks does not look like it will die down any time soon. The one thing that I've noticed is that "cablegate" (God I hate that '-gate' suffix) seems to have angered people in some way that makes little sense to me.

For some reason posting all of those Iraq war documents was ok for some reason but leaking diplomatic cables? He should be executed. I've noticed that on the JREF as well and it seems to defy logic. Then again logic seems to go out the window when thousands of diplomatic cables are leaked to the world.

But that brings me to the point of this post. The ABC reported that Assange believes that Australia has abandoned him. Or as he put it on the Guardian Q&A with him:

I am an Australian citizen and I miss my country a great deal. However, during the last weeks the Australian prime minister, Julia Gillard, and the attorney general, Robert McClelland, have made it clear that not only is my return is impossible but that they are actively working to assist the United States government in its attacks on myself and our people. This brings into question what does it mean to be an Australian citizen - does that mean anything at all? Or are we all to be treated like David Hicks at the first possible opportunity merely so that Australian politicians and diplomats can be invited to the best US embassy cocktail parties.

Although the possibility exists that Assange may have broken Australian law when it comes to leaking some documents (the ACMA blacklist comes to mind), I don't see how leaking US diplomatic cables are a violation of US law.

What disturbs me more is that we have foreign politicians calling for Assange to be executed/assassinated and we have not heard a single thing from the Government. No "don't assassinate our citizens" or anything like that. Basically the Government have thrown Assange to the wolves.

It is here where I can see the parallels to David Hicks. While countries like the UK and France were getting their citizens out of Guantanamo Bay the Australian Government did nothing for David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib were left to rot in that prison because the Government at the time had more important people to worry about like Schapelle Corby or Bali 9 or Van Tuong Nguyen.

The impression at the time was that the Australian Government cares more about drug traffickers then people accused of being terrorists. Now it seems the Government prefers to look the other way when politicians and pundits from other countries are calling for the death of one of their own citizens.

It does make you question whether there is any point in being able to claim that you're an Australian.

Republicans

I'm starting to think that the republican movement is full of idiots. Why exactly would you bother holding a plebiscite on a republic around the same time as a royal wedding?

How the hell could anyone think that this is logical?

In a way I'm pretty happy that they are that stupid because I do lean towards the monarchist side of the debate, but honestly.

What I do think is stupid is this whole "plebiscite" business. Quite frankly I don't think it means anything if 80% of the people wanted a republic or only 50.1%, until the republicans figure out a model of government that will appease a majority of people in the majority of states holding plebiscites would be pointless, especially during a time when more people are going to support a monarchy then support a republic.

What I don't like about Mafia II

It's the game that, really, just kept me distracted until Civilization V came out. (As an aside, the latter is pretty much the reason I haven't posted anything.)

I really enjoyed Mafia and I was hoping for something similar with this one. Instead it really did go backwards.

Not graphically of course, graphically Empire Bay is basically scenery porn. The choice of music is good and the story is still good. And the fact that quite a few of the places are designed to be destroyed is nice too.

However it's not really a game that you can play through more then once. Maybe you'll play it through again to get the Playboy "articles" or you'll be playing it for the achievements.

That being said there is quite a lot missing. Empire Bay has a sort of GTA III feel. The city is alive but it isn't. One of the things that made Mafia work was the fact that it felt like the city was alive. You'd see trolley cars on the streets, the rail system worked, people would do things and the aforementioned public transport system actually worked. You could get on a trolley or a train and travel instead of using a car. Mafia II gets rid of that. The rail system doesn't exist, neither does the subway, and the buses don't do anything.

It's more a shell of a city then a city itself.

The other thing is that the main storyline is pretty much it. What sucks is that they basically set up side missions that never existed. In Mafia after some of the missions you could either go back to Salieri's and end the mission or you could choose to go to Luca for a "steal a car" mission. I liked those missions because they were ones where logic and cunning took precedence over superior firepower. I was hoping that this would be the same here.

I was wrong.

We're introduced to two people, Mike Bruski who works at the junkyard and Frederico Pappalardo who is the crooked union boss of the docks. They both imply that you'll do jobs for them outside of the main storyline but you don't. Go there and it's "Sorry Vito, I haven't got anything for you". They're just there to crush or export cars.

Then there is the hammerspace. Mafia worked because you didn't have hammerspace. You could hide a couple of pistols, and maybe a larger gun, but that was it. You were limited in what you could carry so you had to actually think. The other thing was that you had to be careful when you reloaded, reload too early and you'd lose the remaining ammo. No so in this game. You can keep your ammo and you can carry as many guns as you'd like. Also, why can't you shoot while driving? You could in the last game. Oh well.

The last thing that I miss is the police. Sure they're there but they are useless. Really, really, really useless. Sure Joe will tell me that I've missed a red light, but then again I never stopped at any red lights when I'd play GTA. The reason in that game is the same as this one. There is no incentive to. The police don't seem to care (unlike in Mafia), there are only three things that they care about, bar going about killing people. The first is speeding. As long as you don't kill anyone you can escape with a little fine. The second is stealing cars. The third is having weapons out in public. Very realistic there.

Oh well. It was a fun game to play the first time around. Too bad there isn't any real incentive to do it again.