Kevin Rudd, commenting on the similarities between his problems in making parliament do as he says, and Obama’s predicament in passing his agenda in the US:
“But he has health reform on his agenda on Washington. We have health and hospitals reform on our agenda here in Australia. He has a thing called a troublesome Senate.
“I have a troublesome Senate as well.”
Kevin Rudd was commenting on how he understands the reason for Obama’s delayed visit and how “Australia would fit in with the President’s timetable”. So does Kevin really think that bowing to Obama (that would make a change from Obama’s habit of bowing to everyone…maybe we can have a bow-off) and insulting his own Senate will make the Senate more likely to agree with him, or is his plan to somehow make Obama the new Australian Senate?
Barack Obama’s Indonesia/Australia trip has been delayed by three days so that he can take longer to fail to negotiate the passage of his health care reform agenda. In Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ trademark blundering style, the media were given the run-around, initially told that the President had no intention of changing the date, before announcing it on Twitter instead.
This pushes Obama’s Canberra visit back from Tuesday the 23rd of March until (presumably…Gibbs hasn’t released an updated itinerary yet) Friday the 26th.
The president was expected to leave Thursday for the six-day tour that included Guam and Australia. He has pushed it back until next Sunday.
The White House made the announcement on Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ Twitter.
[..]
On Wednesday, Gibbs hinted that the president wasn’t planning on delaying his travel to negotiate the sticking points among House Democrats in accepting the Senate health insurance reform bill.
“If we have any changes in the schedule, we’ll certainly let you know, but the president believes it is an extremely important trip with — it’s an important region of the world and these are important partners,” he said.
Gibbs added that “if it takes a couple of days extra” to get the bill passed, the president would be fine with missing the March 18 deadline he set for lawmakers “even if he’s already gone.”
This makes me wonder what we’re going to do with our own politicians. Parliament finishes its current session on Thursday the 18th and we were going to have a special session on Monday the 22nd, presumably to justify the cost of keeping them all here over the weekend so that they could be addressed by Obama on the Tuesday. Surely we won’t keep them here for a whole week of nothing, so I suppose this means that we’re sending them back home on Thursday the 18th and flying them back for the visit on Friday the 26th.
If that’s the case, then so be it. As much as I may dislike the man, I won’t begrudge him his visit…it does after all present me with an opportunity to protest against him. Seriously though, I understand the need for foreign leaders to visit, but given the cost to their country as well as our country, I do have to wonder why we can’t replace many of these visits with teleconferences…and that’s for all world leaders, not just the ones I dislike.
Anyway, as strange as it may sound coming from me, I am actually looking forward to Obama’s visit. I will be very interested to see how our domestic politicians react to his visit when it happens as, pleasantries aside, their reactions and comments will say a lot about their own policy agendas. Tony Abbott’s reaction will be particularly interesting as I’m hoping that Obama will be asked for his views on Abbott’s parental leave policy…being a massive tax increase on business and a redistributionist policy that Mao could be proud of, it should get Obama’s full support…one can only hope that such a thing would bring Abbott to his senses, even if it’s too late to regain any credibility on that issue.
That to one side (as it’s a topic which needs it’s own blog post), I do hope that Obama visits Canberra on the Friday as this will give me the opportunity to watch his plane leave in the afternoon. I didn’t see Air Force One when George W. Bush visited and seeing it in person would actually be the highlight of the trip for me. I’ll probably protest and be glad to see Obama leave…but I’ll be happy that I’ll have seen the plane. The trip is worth it if I can see the plane.
I’m not a big fan of air travel. I’m not what you would call a “nervous flyer” but I’m not really at ease on aeroplanes either. I just don’t like the idea of having that much distance between myself and the ground, and the air pressure changes annoy me along with the bits of turbulence…flying through cloud bothers me because it removes my ability to check that we’re still a reasonable distance off the ground, and then, well this will sound nuts, but there are no signposts at 40,000 feet, and so the lack of noticeable direction bothers me.
Anyway, with that in mind, you can probably understand how something like this disturbs me in more ways than I dare to count.
An investigation is underway after a child was heard giving instructions to a pilot from the air-traffic control tower at one of America’s busiest airports.
In a recording that has been confirmed as genuine by the Federal Aviation Administration, the child makes five transmissions from John F Kennedy International Airport — with the pilots in each case all responding enthusiastically to him.
The child is clearly under supervision and being fed lines, but even so, should not be in that position. Whilst the fact that a child was in a position to give orders to pilots is a concern unto itself, the fact that the child speaks, like most children, in a not-entirely-clear voice, is a bigger concern to me due to the increased likelihood of a misunderstanding.
This disturbs me too much to think about, so I’ll turn my attention to something more palatable: the TV news set in the video.
Admittedly at this size it doesn’t come up all that brilliantly, but it’s an interesting set due to the way that it’s designed to have many different angles which all look vastly different, unlike many news sets which are designed to look like you’re stuck in one corner of a room.
I’ve highlighted the important bits here. The Red box shows the female anchor who is presenting to the camera in front of her. The view has changed changed from the camera in front of her to this overview camera, and in a moment it will zoom in on the green box where a reporter is standing in front of another camera and is about to present to it. In the yellow box, a male anchor is standing by for his next appearance.
Given the shape of the set, it wouldn’t surprise me if off-screen there is another part of the set which is used as a backdrop for some other locally-produced program. It’s not uncommon for sets to be used for multiple shows, but it is fascinating to see a single set used for the one program but with a completely different “look” depending on the angle, and especially fascinating to see the overview of the set.
Or maybe I’m just easily distracted in an effort to not be disturbed by the news story.
SBS’s director of television and online content Matt Campbell has painted a grim picture of the broadcaster’s operating situation, blasting the Nine Network’s deal to secure the popular Top Gear programme and saying that the coffers are near-empty.
[..]
A $4 million increase in funding from the Federal Government would be insufficient to cover the decline in advertising revenue, leaving the corporation “in the s**t”, he told the conference. Depicting the situation as “dire”, he said that “we have no money for online; we have no money for SBS TWO”.
Well SBS, welcome to commercial reality, welcome to the real world. Whose fault is it that you didn’t build any exclusivity in to your Top Gear contract? Yes, that’s right…yours.
Putting that to one side, you are a commercial operation, and your advertising revenue reflects your ratings. You are airing hour after hour after hour of programming which almost nobody wants to watch…we have a World Movies Channel on pay television which does pretty well for itself covering much of the same ground as you…the difference is that the people who want to see it, pay to see it.
So here’s a novel idea, rather than asking for more money from the government, why not do what PBS do (yes, PBS, the people from whom you buy the Jim Leher show) and ask for donations? This has a number of benefits, the biggest of which being that people will feel more involved in the station and will be more likely to provide you with feedback as to what they actually want to watch. You can then, in turn, use that information to sell more targeted advertising.
I, for one, would be willing to pay for a 112 Emergency marathon. I’m probably the only person in the country with an interest in that, but you would make money out of it…and best of all for us out here in taxpayer land, you wouldn’t be draining our taxes just so that you can show us stuff that we quite simply don’t want to see.
To the same extent, I’d like to see the ABC become commercial and sever ties with the government, although I suspect that with their higher ratings and a massive radio network which is actually broadcast in English, they might have a better chance than SBS of being commercially viable with their current programming.
SBS, in the real world, you have to adapt to changes. If people aren’t watching, and you’re having trouble attracting advertisers because of it, adding additional channels of the same junk won’t fix the problem…you need to adapt to suit what the people want to see. Or you could just hand in your broadcast licence so that we can sell if off to somebody who can actually broadcast something of interest…perhaps an Australian FOX News clone (Sky News, despite being run by similar people, does not count for a number of reasons which I’ll outline in a future post) to balance out the ABC’s impending 24/7 news channel?
Not in a million years would I have ever guessed that The Canberra Times, noble kitty litter liner that it is, could contain deliberate lies and misrepresentations, but it’s true, it does.
The CT has sadly gained money from me today so that I could see the extent of their utter misrepresentation of Lord Monckton’s lecture at the National Press Club yesterday. To set the record straight is going to take me more than the few minutes that I can spare right now, so I’ll do it tonight instead.
I suppose I could write a letter to the editor as well, but I don’t really see the point as:
1. Most of the people who read today’s article will not read tomorrow’s letters about it
2. I do not intend on further propping up the bottom line of The Fyshwick Guardian, err, The Canberra Little Red Broadsheet by buying a copy of their squalid rag tomorrow just to check if they publish my letter.
More to follow tonight when I have enough time to actually sit down and write details.
A very happy Australia Day to you. Please be upstanding for Julie Anthony’s brilliant (the best, in my view) rendition of our national anthem, Advance Australia Fair.
And it’s not as if you even need to check the news or Exhibition Park to know it. It may be under new management, but it hasn’t attracted a less hoonish crowd. (As in previous years, I am not implying that all attendees are hoons or acting like idiots, so don’t even go there.)
The increase in buffoonery on the roads of Canberra…well the inner north at least, is quite noticeable. Dickson around lunchtime was pretty bizarre from what I saw, and when I took Nattie for a walk this evening, Ainslie Avenue and surrounds weren’t an awful lot better. Notably, the majority of people that I noticed doing bizarre and stupid things had interstate number plates.
A word to the foolish (because the wise don’t need words): the police have the power to confiscate vehicles and it really is a long walk back to pretty much anywhere from Canberra. I should know, given that I walked and hitch-hiked back to Canberra from Sydney in March last year.
2UE’s fill-in breakfast hosts Stuart Bocking and Tracy Spicer put together an excellent piece yesterday morning on how the New South Wales Government seems to be more concerned with feeding neat lines to the media than actually answering questions and addressing concerns.
It all came about following a Daily Telegraph report which claimed that the New South Wales Police’s traffic and speed monitoring plane had not been used once over the Christmas/New Year period despite assurances that it would be used. (As an aside, the information about the plane was pretty sketchy back before Christmas/New Year, with initial statements from the government and police indicating that it could be used anywhere and everywhere and later police statements amending that to just a couple highways near Sydney).
Stuart and Tracey had New South Wales Police’s Traffic Services Commander, Assistant Commissioner John Hartley on the show and asked him about the Daily Telegraph’s report.
John Hartley: It’s been up three times out of nine we could have used it and, look this bad weather is one with only a light plane we don’t want to send it up where it is dangerous or could endanger the pilot or the observer’s life. So we’ve only used it on three days out of the nine we could have.
A very direct answer which shows that the plane has actually been used, contrary to the Daily Telegraph report, and also shows that the police would have liked to use it more often.
You can imagine then, just how surprised Robert Spicer in 2UE’s Newsroom was when he asked the Police Minister, Michael Daley, the same question and didn’t get an answer, but instead was treated to an episode of Daley’s Daily Phrase.
Robert Spicer: How many times has it been in the air?
Michael Daley: Well we don’t give details about that. You understand that it has a deterrent factor even when it’s not in the air because you never know when and you never know where the plane might appear.
Robert Spicer: Yeah that sounds really good minister. Forgive me, but, I mean, the question really stands. How many times has the plane been in the air? You say the Telegraph is wrong, it has flown…how many times has it flown?
Michael Daley: I’ve just answered that question.
Robert Spicer: I don’t understand why you won’t say it’s been up once, twice or three times. I mean your Traffic Services Commander has just told Tracey and Stuart that he thinks it’s been up three times. Why is it a secret from your point of view?
Michael Daley: It’s not a secret. What we’d like to do is to say to drivers that you never know where and you never know where…that you never know when and you never know where that plane might be operating, so we’d prefer not to give details about when and where it’s operating. It’s as simple as that.
Robert Spicer: I appreciate that, I’m not asking you when it’s going to operate, I’m asking you in response to what you were saying about the Telegraph article…how many times has it operated? Not is it operating, but how many times has it operated?
Michael Daley: I’ve just answered that question for you twice.
Robert Spicer: I can understand you not wanting to say when it’s in the air in the future, I have no problem with that, but I fail to understand why you don’t want to say how many times it’s been up.
Michael Daley: Because that’s an operational decision that was made.
So effectively Michael Daley just wants to say that the Daily Telegraph is wrong and “you never know when and you never know where” etc etc etc, without providing any sort of information which might make his claims seem credible.
As Tracey commented a few moments later:
I can just imagine the media meeting they had in Michael Daley’s office this morning with all his media advisors coming up with this key message “you never know where and you never know when” and patting each other on the back and saying “yeah that’ll get it through, we won’t have to say how many times”
I don’t know whether the New South Wales Government are doing this so that they can employ a whole lot of media advisors making up nonsense, whether they’re trying to make the media give up on asking them about anything they don’t feel like talking about, or a combination of both. Regardless, it’s ridiculous. It’s also typical of a government which is so bad at delivering anything useful, that they have become quite expert in producing a vapid smoke screen of hot air which they delusionally think people can’t see through.
I think Stuart summed up the futility of it quite nicely by applying Michael Daley’s interview logic to Michael Daley’s personal life.
You could meet him somewhere and say “look, I forgot your name, what was it again?” “I’ve already answered that”
Brilliant work Stuart, Tracey and Robert in exposing what I think we all already know, but need to be reminded of so that we don’t become desensitised to it.
That’s a headline you’d never see in New South Wales, but it’s the state of affairs in Arizona where the whole implementation seems to be so badly botched that the speed camera program may very well be axed.
PHOENIX (AP) — More than a year after Arizona became the first state in the country to deploy dozens of speed cameras on highways statewide, threats to the groundbreaking program abound.
Profits are far below expectations, a citizen effort to ban the cameras is gaining steam, the governor has said she does not like the program, and more and more drivers are ignoring the tickets they get in the mail after hearing from fellow speeders that there are often no consequences to doing so.
“I see all the cameras in Arizona completely coming down ” in 2010, said Shawn Dow, chairman of Arizona Citizens Against Photo Radar, which is trying to get a measure banning the cameras on the November ballot. “The citizens of Arizona took away the cash cow of Arizona by refusing to pay.”
The Arizona Department of Public Safety introduced the cameras in September 2008 and slowly added more until all 76 were up and running by January.
Supporters say the cameras slow down drivers and reduce accidents, but opponents argue that they are intrusive and are more about making money than safety.
[..]
The cameras led to more than 700,000 tickets to drivers going 11 miles per hour or more over the speed limit from September 2008 to September 2009, the most recent data available, according to the Department of Public Safety. The mandated fines and surcharges on all those tickets would total more than $127 million, but they had generated just $36.8 million through September, Lieutenant [Jeff] King [photo enforcement district commander for the Department of Public Safety] said.
Some of the people who got those tickets are contesting them in court and could end up having to pay the fine, but many of them have gone unpaid because drivers know they have a good shot at getting away with ignoring them. When people get tickets, they can pay without question, request a court date and fight the ticket, or simply ignore the ticket because law enforcement cannot prove they received it. The ticket becomes invalid if a violator who ignores it is not served in person within three months. It is nearly impossible to say how many people have ignored their tickets because courts do not track the figure.
Yeesh. Over here the authorities just assume that you receive the notice and suspend your licence if you don’t pay. It seems to me that this is the main cause of the apparent failure of the speed camera program. If the tickets were enforced, people would be paying them.
Somebody really stuffed the implementation of this program…I wonder who it could be?
While certain to increase, that $36.8 million in revenue through September will still fall far below the $120 million a year that former Gov. Janet Napolitano hoped to put in the state’s coffers when she ordered up the program in early 2007.
Oh…well that explains it. Janet Napolitano, the Obama administration’s National Security Nit-Wit (as Mark Levin so accurately put it yesterday)…the woman who said “the system worked” after a terrorist managed to get explosives on-board an aeroplane and use them on a flight in to Detroit on Christmas Day. The only reason many people didn’t die on that day is the heroic actions of other passengers.
Clearly Janet Napolitano’s definition of “work/worked/working” in the case of national security and for speed camera programs differs from the definition which can be found in English dictionaries.
Given that I spent so much time this morning tracking the news coverage of the Las Vegas court house shooting, I thought it would be a good idea to bring you the actual story courtesy of Channel 13 Action News.
My sincere condolences to the family of Stanley Cooper, the court security officer who was killed in the gunfire.
I appreciate that, for the vast majority of readers of this blog, this story is not particularly relevant as most readers of this blog are Australian, however it does tie in with my previous story about the delay in getting this story out nationally and to the world. Regardless of whether this story is relevant to you, watch the video…what is extraordinary about this is just how good the local news coverage is in the United States, especially when compared to local news coverage over here.
Las Vegas as a city, has a slightly higher population that Canberra (an extra couple of hundred thousand people) and, when you include the surrounding areas, is probably in line with Perth. Despite this, the local news coverage over there is far more thorough and regular than what you will find anywhere over here. Many TV stations have multiple full-length local news bulletins each day, for example. Additionally, this level of coverage is mirrored in many places right across the US…and yet it seems that we can only get this level of detail over here when a dust storm invades Sydney.
I suppose that a lot of this can be put down to the fact that the US has a much greater concentration of inland settlement than Australia, and as such has much more room and incentive for a competitive news business. In many ways I consider this to be one of Australia’s great problems…we are so coast-bound that we inhibit our own growth and prosperity as a nation. If more people lived inland, our coastal cities wouldn’t be choked and over-stretched, the potential for inland industry would grow significantly and, best of all, would probably lead to a self-fulfilling increase in inland rainfall based on more water being used and evaporating, which in turn helps our farming industry to sustain population growth.
Anyway, back on topic. I tip my hat to the staff at Channel 13 Action News. Your coverage of this story was excellent.
A few weeks ago, former Prime Minister John Howard weighed in on the global warming debate. I completely missed it at the time and stumbled upon the video this morning. The substance of what John Howard was saying wasn’t really my main interest at the time as I really just watched the video to see how he is holding up. Back in September he was rushed to hospital due to a potentially life threatening allergic reaction, and I haven’t anything from him or about him since then…so I was a bit concerned for his welfare.
I was very pleased to see that he is looking extremely well, although I think his speech has slowed down a bit. With him looking well, my focus then shifted to his comments on global warming. (Video | Transcript)
I disagree with John’s view that we should “play on the safe side” because “we will all be long dead when we actually know the answer” to whether humans are heating the planet. The evidence is quite clear that we are not heating the planet and it’s a pity that John doesn’t acknowledge that considering his apparent familiarity with the science and the climategate emails.
Still, John did have a good point about what we should be doing to reduce pollution…after all we all agree that actual pollution (Carbon Dioxide is not a pollutant, regardless of what the Environment Protection Agency try to sell to you) is bad, right?
It’s well known that “renewable” energy such as wind is not currently capable of maintaining base load power. Maybe one day it will be, but at the moment if we’re serious about cutting pollution and doing so in viable ways, then our only option is to use nuclear power. Tony Abbott has recently raised this topic as being in desperate need of discussion, and it was refreshing to see John Howard weigh in with some sensible views on the topic:
I think we have to — I think countries that now don’t have nuclear power, including my own, should focus very heavily on nuclear power.
I think we should put enormous amounts of additional resources into things like clean coal technology, ways of making the fossil fuels we now use less polluting.
[..]
So, common sense tells me that what we should focus on is doing things that neither side of the debate can possibly object to, and something that utilizes a clean source of energy such as nuclear power — and it is the cleanest source of energy of all — anything that reduces the polluting impact of the use of coal and gas, things like that, where nobody can really argue.
Nuclear does raise the spectre of storing nuclear waste, and this alarms a lot of people, but not me. I am of the firm view that nuclear waste is only “waste” because we don’t know how to utilise it. I have no doubt in my mind that, given enough research, we can find a way to use nuclear waste for useful purposes, probably further power generation.
We mine so much uranium in this country that it’s a shame that we don’t have a nuclear power industry of our own. Hopefully Tony Abbott is successful in starting the national discussion and acceptance of nuclear power.
When I was gasping in disbelief about how slow the Associated Press and other national news agencies were this morning in covering the Las Vegas courthouse shooting, I completely lost it and burst out laughing when I saw a particular story from AP on the CBS website which was about three and a half months late.
Yes, you read that right…three and a half months late!
On September 24 last year, the Sun newspaper in the UK ran a story about the people who live underground in Las Vegas which was subsequently picked up by The Drudge Report and led to an hysterical conversation between KXNT’s Casey Hendrickson and Heather Kydd:
Lost Vegas
From PETE SAMSON
US Editor
in Nevada
Published: 24 Sep 2009
LOVEBIRDS Steven and Kathryn share a well-organised home in bustling Las Vegas.
They have a neat, if compact kitchen, a furnished living area, and a bedroom complete with double bed, wardrobe and bookshelf featuring a wide selection including a Frank Sinatra biography and Spanish phrase book.
And they make their money in some of the biggest casinos in the world.
But their life is far from the ordinary.
Because, along with hundreds of others, the couple are part of a secret community living in the dark and dirty underground flood tunnels below the famous strip.
Rather than working in the bars or kitchens they “credit hustle”, prowling the casinos searching the fruit machines for money or credits left by drunken gamblers.
Despite the risks from disease, highly venomous spiders and flooding washing them away, many of the tunnel people have put together elaborate camps with furniture, ornaments and shelves filled with belongings.
Casey and Heather’s conversation about the “zombies” of Las Vegas was so amusing that the story stuck in my head quite prominently. So you can imagine how surprised I was when I spotted this story from AP on the CBS website this morning:
LAS VEGAS, Jan. 4, 2010 Las Vegas Tunnels a Refuge for Homeless
Hundreds, Many Struggling with Addictions, Live in a Pitch-Black World, Surviving Off the Excesses of the Strip Above
(AP) Underneath its glitzy casinos, far from the bright marquees, there is another Las Vegas, a pitch-black, dank underworld virtually unknown and unseen by those who live, work and play above.
About 300 people – mostly men battling demons of various addictions – live in the underground storm system built to protect the desert playground from the infrequent cloudburst.
There’s no sign or word of welcome down here. Drug use is nearly universal. Most people carry makeshift weapons and the police don’t often come unless they’re called.
But the denizens have found a haven in the labyrinth of concrete tunnels that snake beneath the city and its suburbs.
I suppose it’s possible that the Associated Press don’t believe in electricity and had to have the story sent from the UK by boat before they could consider running a similar story…but seriously, three and a half months to run a story? I don’t care why it took that long…that’s just late, so late that the late note from Mummy Associated Press just can’t be accepted.
Two federal agents have been shot and are being reported as dead in some places in Las Vegas, but you wouldn’t know it if you were listening to the last set of US national radio news bulletins. It’s bizarre, but it almost seems as if the national news outlets didn’t bother to call their local affiliates for information.
Here’s the basic rundown of events as I noticed it (note that all times are in Las Vegas local time/Canberra local time format)
Approximately 8:10am/3:10am: Shooting occurs
A few moments later: Newsradio 840 KXNT takes a call live-to-air from a witness. Sirens are audible in the background.
8:18am/3:18am: KXNT traffic runs a brief report on the area being locked down by police
Approximately 8:20am/3:20am: Around this time I went and checked other news outlets. The Las Vegas Review Journal had a brief “breaking story” blurb on their website, KDWN 720 had nothing on their website, TV Channel 13 (local ABC affiliate) had a brief story with flashy graphics (OK, a screengrab of their “breaking news” graphic…but still). National news outlets FOX, CBS and ABC had nothing on their websites.
Approximately 8:23/3:23: KXNT news runs a story including an update from the local police spokesperson advising that two federal agents have been shot, one offender has been shot and another may be on the loose.
Approximately 8:40/3:40: The Associated Press releases a very short story advising of a shooting which looks like a cut and paste from a government press release. National outlets FOX and ABC put it on their websites with no further details. KDWN have the story on their website.
8:49/3:49: KXNT runs an out-of-cycle “breaking news” report from Metro Police that the two federal officers are dead. Also note that the area has been completely locked down while police search for a second shooter.
9:00/4:00: Top of hour national radio bulletins run with the “condition unknown” AP report. FOX update their story with a line about the lockdown. CNN don’t have a story as such, but rather a headline which links off to the Vegas FOX TV station’s news story which seems fairly comprehensive.
At some stage a little bit after 9:10/4:10: CBS add the story to their website, merging AP information with KXNT information.
9:20/4:20: KXNT run another out-of-cycle “breaking news” update with some further information and a failed cross to their reporter at the scene (the phone line dropped out).
By 9:30/4:30: NBC get the story on their site, with minor additions to the AP story. ABC bump the story to top billing (which it should have had everywhere for a lot longer than this) including an aerial photo, presumably from the local ABC affiliate Channel 13.
9:30/4:30: KXNT run another out-of-cycle update (I shudder to think how many ads they’ve dropped) with a cross to the reporter on the scene relaying information from police at the scene that Metro Police’s previous release about the federal agents being dead is possibly wrong, plus a description of the scene.
9:45/4:45: National networks seem to be close to catching up with the local outlets, with the notable exception of NBC which continues to run the ancient AP story. CNN actually have an article now.
9:50/4:50: I haven’t had a chance to check the other locals again, but KXNT are running yet another out-of-cycle update pushing the locals way ahead of the nationals again with further updates about the situation.
9:55/4:55: Las Vegas Review Journal run independent confirmation that at least one federal agent has died.
Update: 11:10/6:10: Well this is absurd. I can not find a single Australian media outlet that is aware of this shooting. AAP have not mentioned it yet, and nobody in Australia seems to have noticed. This is the top story in all US media right now, and not a peep down under, nor in Britain’s BBC…perhaps the news is coming by boat. End Update
Don’t get me wrong here. I am not surprised by the fact that local stations which have people on the ground are ahead of the New York based networks. What I’m surprised by is just how far ahead the local stations are, and how long it took the nationals to even notice what is probably going to be the top story for the rest of the day. Each and every one of the national networks has a local affiliate with a newsroom to borrow material from, and with the exception of CBS they seem to be failing to capitalise on these resources. If any of these networks used their local resources properly, they would blitz the competition completely.
All of this just goes to show that news travels just as slowly in the US as it does in Australia. If it doesn’t happen near a major news centre, then you will be waiting a long time for details. Is it any wonder that people are relying on the Internet for news over and above the big news organisations?
As The Canberra Times noted this morning (albeit in an alarmist manner), the Guardian Angels are setting up a chapter here in Canberra. This is fantastic news and should be invaluable in making Canberra and safer and more friendly place.
Despite the Canberra Times and, more concerningly, police minister Simon Corbell’s pronouncements, the Guardian Angels is not a vigilante group. The Guardian Angels is not about taking the law into their own hands, but is instead all about conflict resolution and deterrent, both through street patrols and education programs.
I’ll forgive the CT angle on the story as they were really just repeating the whining of Simon Corbell which is, for a newspaper, understandable. The really sad thing here is that Simon Corbell seems to be incapable of doing even the most basic little bit of research and is instead focussing on the political views of the Guardian Angels’ founder Curtis Sliwa, tarnishing a valid and valuable group in the process, and ignoring the fact that the local chapter of the Guardian Angels have already started talking with the police to make it clear what their aims are.
From the above-linked CT article:
Police Minister Simon Corbell said Canberra usually ranked as one of Australia’s two safest cities and there was no pressing crime problem.
He questioned why there was the need for such a group. ”There is no room for vigilante or paramilitary-type groups in community safety,” he said.
Mr Corbell described Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa as a right-wing conservative commentator and encouraged those involved to give their time to existing organisations working to minimise crime, drug and alcohol problems.
I agree with Simon on one point. Other places are worse. As I mentioned to 2CC’s Mike Welsh this afternoon, a place like Melbourne with its highly-publicised attacks on Indians would, on the face of it, appear to be a more likely candidate for this type of group, however that does not mean that such a group is without merit in Canberra. Canberra has a problem with crime, mostly of the assault and assault plus robbery type, and unfortunately there is only one deterrent to that which Simon seems interested in pursuing, and that is a greater police presence. A good idea for sure, but not one which is practical for any number of economic reasons which Simon would be sure to rattle off if pressed about why police aren’t standing on every street corner at every given moment.
The bottom line is that these types of offences are usually done without witnesses. They are, by their nature, opportunistic, and having people around (be it police, security guards or Guardian Angels) acts as a significant deterrent.
As I said to Mike Welsh this afternoon, and as the founder of the local chapter Damian Heffernan also went to great lengths to emphasise, the Guardian Angels is a peaceful organisation with a mission to prevent violence. As Damian pointed out in the CT article and to Mike Welsh this afternoon:
the worst case scenario is to ever have violence occur or an arrest that’s basically considered as a failure
It should also be noted that the Guardian Angels is a citizen volunteer organisation. They have no special powers and are not under the misapprehension that they do. They are fully aware of the fact that their only power of arrest is the power of citizen arrest, however unlike the vast majority of us ordinary everyday people, they have studied the subject of citizens arrest and understand what that entails. They will also call the police, just like you and I would, if a situation warrants their attention (such as an assault occurring). They are not out to take over from the police but, as Damian said, they are out to hopefully reduce the police’s workload by taking lawful means to stop things happening before they start.
The Guardian Angels have a long track record of successful peace-keeping operations (for lack of a better term), starting with their great work in cleaning up the New York subway. It is a proven success story, so it is beyond me why Simon Corbell is so opposed to it except for political reasons.
This theory is solidified by the fact that the vast majority of the Guardian Angels’ planned work in Canberra will be in education, including working with local schools on anti-bullying programs. This is clearly not an extremist vigilante group, and one look at the organisation’s website would have shown Simon Corbell that. Instead, Simon chooses to be of the belief that anything related to a conservative talk radio host (Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels, is a conservative New York talk radio host, formerly on WABC with a nationally syndicated program, and now on New York’s AM 970 The Apple) must be bad despite his own police being more than willing to work with the Guardian Angels.
I’ll just be glad that Simon isn’t the police commissioner and doesn’t have any real authority over them.
In the meantime, I fully support the Guardian Angels opening a Canberra branch and applaud Damian Heffernan’s initiative in contacting the Guardian Angels so that he can open a branch here. I also look forward to Curtis Sliwa visiting Canberra to launch the chapter next month…if that is indeed what the Canberra Times meant when they wrote:
Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa and the group’s founder in Japan, ”Duke” are expected to launch the Canberra chapter next month.
A visit from Curtis would be absolutely wonderful. I have a lot of respect for him and it would be an absolute privilege to shake his hand if he does come to town.
The Guardian Angels is a great organisation, and I look forward to seeing them out and about in Canberra.
I’m tempted to send Andrew Daddo another email now, but I won’t bombard him.
Currently he is talking to a professor about cigarette packaging, specifically the idea which keeps popping up of removing everything from the packaging except for the health warnings and horrid images. Naturally the professor thinks this is a wonderful idea because he helped write a government report to that effect…and maybe he is right, maybe it would make people less likely to smoke, but I have to ask the obvious questions…what right does the government have to deliberately ruin a legal industry?
If the government wants to stop people from smoking, then it should have the guts to make tobacco illegal and take the subsequent hit to its bottom line from the taxes which it would lose as a result. At the moment, it is perfectly legal to produce, sell and use tobacco. Taxing tobacco to the hilt does very little to stop people who are addicted from smoking…all it really does is reallocate money which they would have spent on other things.
According to a study, smokers who are continunally confronted with warnings that cigarettes kill actually develop coping mechanisms to justify continuing their habit.
Comparatively, if smokers are shown warnings suggesting the habit could make them unattractive, they are more likely to give up. Teenagers who took up the habit to impress or fit in with their peers were more likely to be influenced by warnings about their appearance, the study found.
“In general, when smokers are faced with death-related anti-smoking messages on cigarette packs, they produce active coping attempts as reflected in their willingness to continue the risky smoking behaviour,” the study said.”
People know that smoking is bad for them, but they do it anyway. If the government is serious about saving lives and not just about increasing their bottom line, then they need to make tobacco illegal and offer assistance to people to wean them off the tobacco.
