Hindu nationalist violence in Sydney

This post is similar in scope to one I put up five weeks ago about the farmers’ protests in India. Not all news is local. In the post you’re reading, however, there’s a strong local angle.

I began to look at this series of events on the same day that the Quad – a meeting of the leaders of Australia, India, Japan and the US – started to operate publicly. News of Hindu nationalist violence in Sydney appeared in my socials.

The Sikh community had been in the news. Not long before it announced a new private school would open in the city’s northwest.  This Sydney Morning Herald story contained details of the institution – designed to foster tomorrow’s Sikh leaders – in Rouse Hill. The story said:

It will teach students from kindergarten to year 12, and will have boarding facilities, sporting fields, a pre-school and a Sikh temple. It will cost an estimated $200 million, funded by members of the Sikh community.

Punjabi farmers had been visible in the public sphere in India because they’d been protesting a new agricultural regime. The government had used measures to silence criticism of its new laws, sometimes, as a deterrent, going so far as to put protesters in jail if they had a high profile. 

In Sydney, Greens Senator David Shoebridge was remarking in Parliament on the activities of far-right Hindu extremists.  

Shoebridge was referring to an incident in which a group of four young Sikh men were attacked after leaving a restaurant at night on February 28. Their car was surrounded by approximately a dozen assailants — whom the victims identified as Indians — and smashed with baseball bats, hammers, and even an axe. One victim identified at least one of the attackers as a participant in the allegedly RSS-BJP sponsored car rally from two weeks earlier.

It wasn’t an isolated incident, as another story reported.  

Amar Singh, President of Turbans 4 Australia, a Sikh charity organisation, says the Sikh community have never had “issues” with their Hindu compatriots in Australia. But when the Indian government, led by Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), began stigmatising protesting Indian farmers as part of Sikh separatist plot, relations between the two religious groups made a dramatic turn for the worse.

Last month Singh answered a call from an unlisted number on his cell phone - which would turn out to be a threat against his life. 

“Modi is our god,” said the Indian accented caller. “If you don’t shut up, we will teach you a lesson. We will tie you up and burn you to death.”

The Guardian has got onto the story, publishing this on Friday.  I suspect that Prime Minister Morrison will not remonstrate with Narendra Modi on account of the Sydney violence. It’ll be far down on his list of priorities. But just as Scott Morrison is criticising the CCP on account of its anti-democratic policies being exercised in Hong Kong, the Australian PM should talk to Modi about groups that, in India, benefit from government support. 

The holy grail was always due recompense for use of News Corp content

It’s been 12 years – this 6 April – that the media giant’s Robert Thomson declared in an interview:

"Google encourages promiscuity -- and shamelessly so -- and therefore a significant proportion of their users don't necessarily associate that content with the creator.

"It's certainly true that readers have been socialised – wrongly I believe – that much content should be free."

It was a declaration of war for which the peace has just been announced.  

Under the new three-year agreement, Facebook will pay for news articles from publications such as The Australian, The Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun. Sky News Australia has also signed an agreement with Facebook.

Thomson’s negative animus with regard to Google had converted itself, over the years, into a motion by media outlets in Australia that turned into laws drafted and put to Parliament for debate. At the last minute, Google capitulated and began to sign agreements with media companies. Facebook refused, and historically blocked users from posting news articles to its website. Then the government changed some aspects of the laws and Facebook unblocked the news.

Now this.

The “free” bit is still true – most readers of news won’t pay for it. But this is changing. For some the alignment of the interests of the dreaded Murdoch media and IT giants such as Google and Facebook will seem disturbing. A new bogeyman to revile and slam in a thousand new acerbic tweets flung like refuse out of life’s virtual cage. But what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, and smaller media companies will also benefit from the new regime.

But note the sunset clause. Such accord will be contingent upon both perceived return and on public opinion. In a way it’s still up to users what kind of dispensation exists in the public sphere, from an economic standpoint at least. If you think that IT behemoths should pay for the privilege of allowing you to share what you like on social media, then get vocal. And forget about your personal brand of politics. 

More is a stake than whether your favourite political party is elected to office. News Corp’s typically sustained activism over a large number of years – something that it specialised in as it works in various public spheres to get change made – has, in the present case, turned out to be a blessing for all news makers. Even a website as progressive as Crikey – which is run by a company named Private Media – can benefit measurably from Murdoch’s intransigence. No doubt its journalists would never have thought they’d see the day that they might be able to praise the feisty and conservative nonagenarian patriarch.

Keeping the bastards honest – Rudd and his crusades

There was something different about Kevin Rudd from the beginning. I remember being at an election night party in 2007 when Rudd led the Labor Party to victory. We all stood out on the balcony of a cute suburban home in Marrickville – veges on the boarder and chooks on the grass – and talked about social media and petrol prices. Rudd’d got our attention with his “greatest moral challenge” address to the National Climate Summit that year. 

But once in power, in 2010 Rudd postponed the introduction of an emissions trading scheme.  It was a stunning backflip that served – at one stroke – to erode the Labor Party leader’s credibility. It signalled a temporary pause on Rudd’s brand of politics, though Bill Shorten flirted with Rudd’s inimitable tendency to engage in virtue signalling. Bill’s EV policy in 2019 had something of Rudd’s messianic zeal about it but it, too, was not a winner and the electorate failed to embrace him. 

I think that part of the reason they did so is because of Rudd’s abiding awfulness. Not only was he a spineless coward – the electorate mused – but he was also a bully, verbally lashing out at subordinates in the most craven manner. From the front: smooth and deliberate. Behind the scenes: a chaos of unreconciled aggressions.

Anthony Albanese is shaping up to be a different kind of leader. Unlike Shorten with his ambitious EV policy – reducing to 105g/km the entire fleet of light vehicles (which would’ve required a total shift to pure-electric EVs for new car purchases) – Albanese is playing a more moderate game of waiting until the Liberal-National Coalition makes a mistake, then statesmanlike fronting the press to give Scott Morrison – the prime minister – a tongue lashing. Not the most effective speaker (like Joe Biden), Albanese sounds a bit diffident, a bit not-quite-there. 

Just like an Opposition’s pre-election policies. Albanese’s method has a lot in common with Barry O’Farrell’s. The Liberal Party leader in New South Wales ran a small-target campaign in the lead-up to the 2011 election and waited for the other side to make mistakes, then took the prize in the end. The Liberal-National Coalition has been in power in the state ever since.

Rudd, meanwhile, is on a new crusade: defanging the Murdoch press. This is a losing battle as nobody will be even remotely interested in repeating Julia Gillard’s loss of face in 2013 – when such reform of media laws was last attempted – a failure that was followed by Labor losing the election to the detestable Tony Abbott. 

The media for its part should be highlighting where Rudd is weakest, and deflect any criticism of Labor onto his shoulders. Doing so’d make it easier for Albanese – the anointed one – to shine, and to beat the L/N Coalition he’ll pretty much need to shine bright. The one good thing that can come of the unpleasant Rudd’s recent visibility is that it can serve as an opportunity to show how decent and electable Albanese is.

Tech boffins shouldn’t risk losing social licence to deal with Australia

When, on 18 February, Facebook stripped its Australian users – people who generate revenues for them, part of that breed of individual whose participation in the platform is the underpinning of all value inhering in it – of the ability to do something as natural and reasonable as sharing links to the news stories they rely on to survive, I was, along with many others, shocked. Here was a company that had called its primary vehicle for sharing – the “news feed” – banning news by blocking links to news websites.

I disabled the app on my iPhone and removed the browser tab from my PC’s start screen but on 23 February the company was back at the bargaining table ready to talk with Australian news producers – people who, in the final analysis, create so much of the value they rely on to keep consumers coming back. 

Juanita Philips does a cross on the ABC news, evening of 23 February.

I was doubly shocked seeing a range of different views in the public sphere – mainly on Twitter. Twitter came into its own for me over these dark days of privation as I’d previously there created a number of different accounts so could hold conversations with different people, but my views were not always echoed and I learned, to my shame, that many people blamed the media for the impasse. In most cases one name came up again and again. A bugbear for all occasions, someone so notorious as to be a byword for poor conduct. I won’t mention the name but I think that anyone who reads my article can imagine what it is. This bias was particularly evident among people on the left and, furthermore, from people living in the United States, where Fox News is, for many, a regretted participant in the public sphere.

But just to denigrate an entire business process on account of your personal revulsion due to one individual media player seemed to me to be counterproductive. There’s a meme on social media about the French philosopher who is said to have quipped something along the lines that holding certain views was regrettable but that the person speaking would defend to the death the right of anyone to have their views heard. The present case makes a mockery of such well-meaning and altruistic principles, and shows us up to be partial and narrow-minded. 

We need to defer to principles in the current debate which is – despite the misleading headlines of last Tuesday – not yet over. Not by a long shot. And we must ask ourselves what living without political speech would be like – for that is what Facebook’s ban means. A world where speech can only be legally conducted upon such subjects as birthdays, pets, and meals eaten in local restaurants. No talk of government policies, of laws that impact on our lives, of court cases, or of diplomatic visits by heads of state. A blanket of silence is discretely drawn across an entire ecosystem of ideas just because a few pampered nobodies in Silicon Valley won’t share. It reminds me of the CCP and their dogged unwillingness – to the point where they simply ban Facebook and Twitter and set up their own social media sites – to share power.

It’s this lack of generosity that is so striking in the case, a lack that says something revealing about ourselves. About the US media pundit who – generously placed on-screen by an eager national broadcaster – poo-poohs the government’s efforts. About the malicious troll who slanders a media baron because others will mindlessly reward their post with likes and shares. About the family member who echoes the same sentiments. About friends who grudgingly – grudgingly! – accept the need for regulation when pressed – when pressed! – but who revert to blaming the mainstream media for not having responded to the technological changes of the past generation with sufficient foresight. 

As if anyone could have done. We need the media more than ever before but it will never be perfect – and this is the tragedy. Because in one person’s eyes the media is flawed therefore the entire system must be overhauled. Because one person cannot stand listening to Sky News after dark a whole group of professionals must be starved of the means to make a living. Just because one person, moreover, likes to read stupid, badly-punctuated and barely literate hot takes by some random posting on an “indie” media site Channel Nine must be punished. 

Or 7 West Media. Or Network Ten. A thousand curses upon the heads of those who criticise the Morrison government for doing the right thing. A million thumbs down for Mark Zuckerberg and his faceless minions, penny-pinching like Scrooge and pretending that they are popular when it is the weird 55-year-old woman you met on Facebook who posts cracked-but-entertaining recaps of her youth who engages you. Or the old friend – over 80 years now but still full of ideas – who resorts to paraphrasing news stories the site has stopped him from sharing. Or the former colleague who puts up pictures of lizards he meets at the beach. Or the goofy right-winger, a friend of a friend, who celebrates Trump in the face of overwhelming pressure to capitulate. It is in these fragments, on the edges of debate, that the real action takes place.

The tech boffins shouldn’t risk losing their social license to deal with Australia. We are the world.

Working around Facebook’s ban

To begin with, here’s what people yesterday saw when they tried to post links taken from Australian news websites:

I saw this humorous take early this morning in my Twitter timeline:

Taking a lead from Chris’ approach – while the BBC home page early this morning (Sydney time) featured a story about the ban, the New York Times’ site did not – my post today contains an often light-hearted take on a first-world problem as the social media giant goes head-to-head with the Australian government. I take a term out of the playbook of one of my favourite TV shows – ‘Hard Quiz’ (Wednesday nights at 8pm on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s main channel) – keeping in mind Tom Gleeson’s Monty Python-esque suppressed grin – a self-conscious smirk – as he hams it up, poking fun at all those drama-filled moments we enjoy so much when we watch TV. “Will Diane win a weekend away at Noosa or will she go home with nothing?” 

The standard, gimcrack game-show spiel. 

We adore the dramatic moment – as long as nothing important’s at stake – but while the Facebook v. Morrison govt contest appears for most to rank low on the criticality stakes, it has affected others hard. 

But there could be an upside: we might start learning how to write. https://magnetformedia.blogspot.com/2021/02/facebook-news-ban-puts-australians-back.html So, to put theory into practice, today I cheekily put the following on Facebook:

Two articles abt Facebook’s ban today on the Sydney Morning Herald website. In one, the PM says he’ll take the issue to the G7 in June. Morrison has spoken abt the ban w Narendra Modi, the Indian president. In another article, Stephen Scheeler, a former chief executive of Facebook in Australia and New Zealand, says, “Lying at the heart of Facebook’s abrupt ban on all Australian news is a global strategic gamble that will have a huge bearing not just on Mark Zuckerberg’s behemoth, but on the dynamic between Big Tech and democracy.” He adds: “I suspect its bet is this: that by taking an aggressive hard line with a middle power, such as Australia, a tough message will be sent to the rest of the world to back off on regulation.”

To demonstrate just how irritated they were with the IT company, people were also doing other things. You can, for example, just copy and paste the news article’s entire text, as did this man:

Another person had the same idea, but only copying part of the target article:

Another way around the ban is to put up screen shots made from offending articles:

The same guy also used the “double-blind” method: screen shots of blog posts about news stories:

One more way around the ban is to use TinyURL:

This solution has the drawback that it crops out images and headlines and teasers, making it necessary to add some own text. Another approach – this time by a freelancer – is to direct people to an email subscription service that is run independent of Facebook. Stephanie Wood has done this, posting:

As I've discovered since taking a redundancy from Fairfax Media in 2017, life on the outside as a freelancer is incredibly tough. I'm not sure right now how I'm going to make a go of it. Facebook's action is a blow to freelancers like me who have tried to build communities and followings using the platform. (Never mind the blow it is to multiple other organisations and people who have used it to get important messages out into the world.)

You can go to her website at http://stephaniewood.com and subscribe:

Facebook’s decision to ban Oz news stories could turn out to be costly for the American company as – compelled by sovereign pride – any number of countries around the world may take a hard line, and move to rein in the behemoth. People who use the service might think, “This is just another case of the company meddling with my life.” Most don’t like to be thwarted. Having cornered part of the market for vanity and spite – the two sides of ego being shitposting and bragging – Facebook might find that it quickly loses all credibility as a trusted partner in the business of staying in touch with friends, acquaintances, and family. 

Complete strangers might well become friends – this has of course happened to me, as it has with pretty much everyone – but I like to feel as though I am in control of the process. Another thing that seems to be ubiquitous is that feeling that Facebook is listening to one’s conversations. This also detracts from the pleasure of the process. For example when you send an email to someone in which you mention a category of consumer product or service and then – all of a sudden – you see an ad for that same product or service on the social graph. As though Facebook had been listening to your chatter (as, indeed, it is).

Facebook knows what to do to counter such worries: it simply ignores them. But it doesn’t know what to do about the Australian government’s new media code – which is due to shortly pass through the Senate – so it is crushing opposition by blocking the posting of news articles. Such a heavy-handed response merely highlights the company’s frustration and dismay. Latika Bourke, the Sydney Morning Herald’s London correspondent, published a story this morning about how the UK government is viewing the Oz news ban: 

The chair of the British parliament’s committee for the media and tech says Facebook’s “irresponsible” decision to cut off news and official government feeds for Australian users constitutes “bullying” and will unite legislators from around the world into wanting to curb Big Tech’s abuse of its monopoly.

Facebook news ban puts Australians back in control of their messaging

Facebook has decided to do the unthinkable and stop Australians – and people overseas posting news from Down Under – sharing their favourite media stories. This move comes just a day after it was announced that Google and a few Australian news organisations had reached agreements on profit sharing.

This move by the tech giant pushes people over to Twitter, but it might have an unintended effect as people, driven by who they are – sharing embodies intrinsic parts of our personalities – start to write their own posts with perhaps the occasional quote from a news outlet. Or even with no quotes – Facebook might block such use of its interface – and, rather, paraphrased extracts of news stories.

We’ll have to see what happens. Twitter, meanwhile will take more territory from its competitor. The government hasn’t asked Twitter to share any profits from its use of news, so as far as things stand currently – the day this article you’re reading was posted – there’s no reason to fear that it’ll become completely impossible for people to engage with other around the news campfire.

Whatever happens, the Facebook shift will increase the importance of literacy. People now – eager to connect with friends and family, and denied a basic freedom by Facebook’s greed – will learn to craft sentences that have the same pith and rigour as your average news story. Short, sharp, to-the-point. 

News is where we live. We’re swimming in stories like fish in the sea. Without stories we die. Solitary confinement can be fatal as it changes the way our brains work, so being connected with others in a news environment is critical to the health of the polis. Without this outlet we feel frustration and will resort to other measures in order to release the pent-up emotions we harbour as a result of dealing with the fear and loathing of daily life. News liberates as it consoles. 

It can also terrify and anger. But whatever happens, with Facebook’s decision comes a moment when Australians – and, indeed, the world – must find other ways to message, to shine a light on the hill, to let fly the billows of signal smoke across the valleys of the oceans.

A little ruckus over the Sussexes’ second child

This article isn’t a swipe at the media but is, instead, a swipe at those who exploit it. I’ll start on 15 February when, at 7.30am Sydney time, America’s Associated Press tweeted that Duke and Duchess of Sussex were expecting their second child. What followed in my limited universe of hopes and aspirations was very small, the contretemps, and hardly worth mentioning but for the consistency of the replies to my adventure, which had been, as follows:

Odd! Considering the Sussex' difficult relationship w the media, why trumpet about Megan again being in the family way? I don't understand ..

Just to make it clear I was genuinely puzzled I put a small emoji in at the end of the post, a quizzical face with a half-frown and blank eyes. I thought the emoji might take any sting out of the post, render it bland and qualify it with the sort of humour – obvious and conventional – that you need to use on Twitter if you want to avoid difficult interactions with people who are more likely to express anger than to empathise with what you’re feeling.

I got anger. One person replied:

They confirmed the news to get it out of the way so paparazzi wouldn’t have an incentive to stalk them for a scoop. Are you new here?

This person was more reasonable:

Because think of all the media outlets commenting on how fat she's getting over the coming months? If they drip feed the news they want the media to have then fair play to them.

As was this (not entirely convincing) riposte:

Meghan is an American actress and celebrity. We would care if she wasn't married to Harry. We're just especially delighted because they are an incredible power couple who are deeply in love. I'm so glad he's away from that toxic family and living his best life.

Over on Facebook I also had grief, having posted this:

Associated Press just announced The Sussexes are expecting a new child. Find it hard to judge Megan but it seems odd to go to the media again after having just won a court case against the British tabloids. If you're going to critique the media -- and even take them to court -- surely you'd want to avoid using them entirely. It seems silly to me, but others will have different views, I'm aware ...

A person used Facebook to snippily correct my spelling of the duchess’ name (I’d put “Megan” – a capital crime in itself), and added:

The case was around the press printing a private letter between Meghan and her father.

The royal tradition of sharing the news of new arrivals is something quite different.

She went on to say that she saw a different standard being applied to Meghan compared to other members of the royal family, with a coda containing information to the effect that she wasn’t a fan of the royals in general – which I took to mean that she supports the idea of an Australian republic.

With one of my Twitter adversaries (almost readying himself for pistols at dawn) I had a further discussion. He said,

I don’t know how to tell you this, but when people get pregnant they often announce it.

To which I replied (considering his response to at least have been civil):

Sure mb to family, but not to the world. Megan and Harry have made a point of critiquing the media. Megan even won a court case recently. If William mentions it in passing to the media that's enough, surely.

To which he responded:

We announced ours on Twitter and Facebook. We don’t have a spokesperson. 

Don’t you have something better to clutch your pearls over?

Ouch! As a parting shot I replied:

I should get new pearls. My old string has been worn down to nubs from constant fretting.

He finally shut up, probably because I’d added another emoji to my humorous tweet, this time a face with eyes of different sizes, as though my avatar were demented, and with its tongue sticking out of its mouth. This emoji was more aggressive than the first one – the replies to my fairly innocuous tweet had been, some of them, unnecessarily nasty – but it still contained a sting, just to let my interlocutor know I wasn’t a complete pushover. Someone else said,

They quit being working royals. They didn't enter a monastery

*Sigh* 

It was all – the sarcasm, the threat of a flame war if I carried on (which I didn’t), the negative emotions being expressed rather than positive ones – all of it was pretty standard for Twitter. Here was all the evidence anyone could need of how fear and loathing has come to characterise public debate, and while reactions to my well-meaning comment were often humorous, I was, in all cases, the butt of the jokes. Not the media and certainly not Meghan who, as had happened so many times, was clearly a figure whose destiny provokes the strongest possible reactions in people.

The AP story that caused all the reactions had the title, “Duchess of Sussex expecting 2nd child, a sibling for Archie,” and was, therefore innocent enough. It also contained an image showing Harry and Meghan walking along together before a collection of stray individuals. The royal couple are holding an umbrella – or, at least, Harry is. Meghan in the photo has her hand gripping Harry’s right arm. In her right hand she holds a clutch and she is dressed – looking slim and terrific (absent baby bump) – in a light-blue gown. They are out for the evening perhaps, I thought to myself, at a concert. 

In fact it had been an awards night. (This article kindly lists all of Meghan’s fashionable clothing, just so the photo is not wasted.) Marie Claire had a story about the same event, which was in March last year.  

But – don’t look at me! (maintain a civil tongue, now) – three days before the AP story went up, the Sydney Morning Herald had a story headlined, “Meghan Markle wins privacy battle.” 

Meghan Markle has won her privacy battle against a British tabloid, with a court ruling the publication of a letter she sent her father was unlawful.

The video on the newspaper’s website started with a still image that was also taken at the 2020 Endeavour Awards, the only difference between the two images being that for the video the SMH photo had been taken from a different angle.

Back on Facebook someone I only know from using that platform for communication, said:

They want it both ways and all on their terms

Which I thought summed up the situation perfectly, and which had been – in my initiative sallie – the nub of the matter. The royals in question were milking an opportunity to raise their brand since – now that they’d split formally from Harry’s dysfunctional family – they would in future partly rely on money they could earn from their own enterprise in order to pay the bodyguards and the hotels and the first-class seats in international passenger jets (at least, once the vaccine had started to kick in and borders opened up again).

Bing lied to me. Harry and Meghan are no longer “senior” royals, and in a January 2020 story Time put up this:

In a statement shared on their official Instagram page on Jan. 8, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex said that, as they transition away from their role as “senior” royals, they plan to “work to become financially independent, while continuing to fully support Her Majesty The Queen.”

In the AP story there’s this:

A Buckingham Palace spokesman said: “Her Majesty, Duke of Edinburgh, Prince of Wales and the entire family are delighted and wish them well.”

Rancour abates on account of the happy occasion (blood is thicker than water) despite a tense separation of what were – once upon a time – shared interests. But being aspirational Harry and Meghan are not going to let a good opportunity pass by them. They do, indeed, want to have their cake – be unburdened by the exigencies of royal routine – and eat it, too – they’re not going to miss a chance to capitalise on the fever for royalty shared by most of the community.

It ensures an unlimited supply of lucrative offers from different parts of the global community. For these two are, without question, global superstars. The crème de la crème. Yet people still sympathise with them. With Meghan especially. As though they were people “just like us”.

Her problem is that relations with The Mail on Sunday (the British tabloid she sued in court) and its ilk – economic loss will be offset by publicity for the machinery of signification – are likelier to continue, in future, fraught if – as she’s done with her pregnancy announcement – she cravenly capitalises on the intersection of family and public sphere. 

Of course, we cannot know what the future holds. We can only hope that, unlike their grandfather, her children grow up content with their lot and able to lead fulfilling and productive lives. While, considering what happened to Harry’s mother, kicking up a fuss over the expected baby is probably not wise, retirement would lead to a fall in income.