2047
#MeToo#MeToo. An age of hysteria and false allegation. Of moral panic and profound disinterest. The government a criminal enterprise. On the public broadcaster, wall to wall women expressed a blizzard of outrage. The commentariat in full flight. Now they were attacking the Minister for Women. Then Bill Shorten. Then Tim Ferguson for sending crude insults to a journalist more than 20 years ago. Where did any of it end?
Not with sane, rational, sensible debate.
Not with calm resilience in face of the slings and arrows of misfortune.
Not with commonsense.
Nor with a shrug and a laugh at the commonness, the quirkiness, the misfiring of human communications.
It ended in a barren corridor. In a stab of pain to the heart, a jump of fright. In a clasping sense of, what happened? How did I end here? Where is everybody? Where is that audience that applauded me all the way?
Where is the herd? My friends? My tribe?
Where is that grand enterprise, the improvement of the human race, that we were so eagerly embarked upon?
Parliament House security has used a whiteboard to block cameras capturing Michaelia Cash’s arrival at another Senate Estimates hearing.
It came just minutes before Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull defended the Jobs Minister’s threat to reveal rumours about female staff in Bill Shorten’s office.
During a rowdy start to Question Time the Mr Turnbull said Minister Cash was being “bullied and provoked by (Labor) Senator Cameron who was making insinuations about (her) staff.” Senator Cash erupted under questioning by Labor's Doug Cameron in a Senate Estimates hearing yesterday threatening to "name every young woman in the opposition's leader's office over rumours that had circulated." Yaxley, Kerrie, Parliament House uses whiteboard, 1 March, 2018.
It came to him time and time again: 2047.
That was the year the Central Government would collapse.
A country not just riven by discontent, as it was now, but a country which had descended into chaos. Ethnic gangs roamed wide and dark. Shops were shuttered. Extreme poverty the norm. If there was an historian to see where it all began... But there was not.
Survival, that was the only thing.
As the cities burned.
As the wealthy enclaves threw up barriers to the mobs.
As those who had the most to lose had the most to fear.
Comedian and director Tim Ferguson has issued an apology after an Australian journalist accused him of directing a “vile and obscene campaign of bullying” against her, which she described as sexist and “psychologically debilitating”.
News Corp published an article on Tuesday by Candace Sutton, who alleged Ferguson sent her obscene drawings and sexist and abusive letters over several months in 1990.
At the time Ferguson was at the height of his fame and performing with comedy trio the Doug Anthony Allstars on the ABC. Sutton was working for Fairfax Media publication The Sun-Herald.
Candace Sutton. Former press officer for the NSW police. Senior reporter at News Limited. Both treacherous, highly competitive, rough and tumble environments. She should have auctioned them off on eBay.
But anything could happen in a #MeToo#MeToo world.
In the shallow pond of Australian politics there had been a blizzard of victims and a chorus of condemnation. The rednecks at the local pool were blunt in their assassination. Crude. Unrepeatable. In the running for Most Politically Incorrect Male of the Year. They would never be part of the grander swirl. Their own outrage at being left out, "You can't say anything anymore," would never make it on to a television screen, a heart of darkness, a misstep, not even on to Facebook. Trigger words and faux compliance. "The world's gone mad," the old men declared in agreement, and with that Old Alex went along.
"Trouble," he said, and dived under heavily chlorinated water.
"A waste of time," muttered the Watcher on the Watch. Bored.
But time was only precious if you were caught within its matrix. Entropy in decaying forms. The infinite beckoned every moment of every day. "His time will come." Who would care? These things were nothing but flashes in the infinite, and he trekked infinity symbols into the sand on a daily basis.
"It will only get worse."
A phony war. We've done our best to protect him.
Former police. Old soldiers. Retired ASIO officers. Everyone on holiday.
"I understand."
In these creaking hollows they called a life, in these vast mirror halls congested with rumours, in a call for arms that never came. Vast rumours where no rumours lay. He was visceral in his hatred. He was a non-stop pedant. There were larger games afoot. A long strip of white sand. A sleeping suburb. A forced hysteria that operated only on screens. That reverberated not a jot in that sleeping place. Indifferent. Unacknowledged. They were sent crying for comfort.
THE BIGGER STORY:
In the 1990s, a term emerged for the role that vivid coverage of humanitarian crises by 24-hour news networks played in the U.S. government’s decisions to use military force. Academic research has never proven a clear “CNN effect”—certainly nothing as straightforward as the public successfully pressuring policymakers to save lives because of television reports—but its premise remains alluring: that mass media need only convey how terribly others are suffering for people and their governments to do something about it. In recent days, the Syrian government’s relentless bombardment of the besieged rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta has demonstrated just how muted the CNN effect is in Syria. We see images of bloodied children, covered in rubble or shrouds, pop up in our Twitter feeds. We watch a doctor fall to the floor in tears because she knows she can’t save the life of a boy whisked to her overwhelmed hospital. “I was just making bread for him when the roof fell in,” the boy’s mother wails. “At least in heaven there’s food.”And yet there has been little public outcry in the United States over the military offensive and only belated and half-hearted efforts by world powers to stop it. News of the slaughter in Ghouta seems to be all around us, even as news of serious efforts to end it is nowhere to be found. Freidman, Uri, The 'CNN Effect' Dies in Syria, The Atlantic, 2 March, 2018,
There is an emerging ideological convergence among activists from different Indonesian Islamic groups toward a more Shariah-oriented outlook. Such a convergence can be seen from the joint efforts of these activists to enact local Islamic regulations in various Indonesian regions.
By Alexander R Arifianto*
Since the Defending Islam rallies in late 2016 and early 2017, there is a perception of a growing ideological convergence between clerics and activists affiliated with different Indonesian Islamic groups, ranging from mainstream ones such as Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah – the two largest Indonesian Islamic groups, to the more conservative groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir Indonesia (HTI) and Islamic Defenders Front (FPI).
Beyond the headlines, this apparent convergence can be found in numerous localities throughout Indonesia. Since Indonesia’s political decentralisation began in 2001, activists from these groups have worked together in numerous localities throughout Indonesia to successfully enact and implement local shari’ah regulations known as perda shari’ah in these localities. As of today, nearly 450 local regulations have been implemented by more than 100 Indonesian cities and municipalities.
The proliferation of these regulations in multiple localities throughout Indonesia is a ‘bottom-up’ strategy by Islamic groups to change Indonesia’s legal foundation to become more religiously-based instead of Pancasila-based. This is something Indonesian policymakers should be paying more attention to in order to better appreciate the implications for nation building.