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AUSTRALIAN DIARY

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NOVEMBER 2011

WORLD MOVE TO DEMOCRACY: ASSANGE, GREECE.

The North Atlantic Banking Crisis and it's reverberations have moved public opinion to a new location.  The elites of the world, who appear to believe that the mass of people are not intelligent enough to make the right choices about how our economies should function, about what information they should be given, are beginning to sense that this movement of the world psyche might be a little harder to deflect.

The "Occupy Wall Street" movement will probably end up being the centre of this movement.  Being centreless, it will be harder to "manage".  If it sets up some sort of an online polling system, and so becomes the first popular movement without leaders, then it will become extremely difficult to manage.

If Assange is extradited to Sweden, and if, when there, he is transported to the USA, then events will gain greater urgency.  Assange is now a world public figure, and a hero of the new movement.  Being jailed will add to his cachet.  As an aside, I would not like to be either of the two girls responsible for that extradition.  Their lives have irreversibly changed.

World leaders are condemning the Greek President for democratically asking his electorates' opinion as to the path he should follow.  Come again??  Asking the victims what should be done?  Pity the elite didn't ask the masses before they formed the EMU.

My suggestion to the Greek People is cancel EMU membership, and declare all debts will be paid in Drachma, calculated at the current exchange rate when the cancellation takes effect.  Maybe the drachma won't be worth much, but the Greeks will manage.  And Greece might stop being such a desirable waystation for middle east refugees, and once again become a premier low cost tourist destination.

18th November.  Well the elites (To me that is the wealthiest 0.03%) put a stop to that very smartly, didn't they.  Greek President resigns and a recalcitrant Silvio Berlusconi in Italy got much the same treatment.  I suppose I can understand why.  If any of those countries left the ECM, those banks would lose a huge amount of money, and the biggest losers might well be the people who most profited and were ultimately responsible.  And make no mistake, the amounts of money (i.e. potential losses) involved could buy Fort Knox and Manhattan and the City of London and the emperor's palace in Tokyo.  And lots of change left over.

OPEN LETTER TO RUPERT MURDOCH.

Summary of events to 14th November:  You have retired Hartigan, and appointed someone who succeeded selling online media.  The figures published for Australian media (p25 Australian) are not pretty.  The Australian has just launched an online edition which it is proposed will be available for a couple of dollars a week.

Critique:  It is probably not going to work.  I buy Newspapers most days at around 1AM, which is why I do not subscribe.  The online edition needs a complex password, and my computer/ipad does not remember it.  So although I have a subscription, I don't use it.  Not only that, it is too expensive, and the website is not organized well, and I actually prefer hardcopy for the access advantage.  (It is easier to find something I noticed earlier).

Suggestions:
 I also suggest that you offer a secure online voting system on proposed government legislation.  Use something like edentiti to stop voter fraud, and show a running total of results before people vote.  I would suggest that people be given accounts, and be able to change/reverse their original vote on subsequent occasions.  Such a system might result in improved operation of democracy, and also improve perceived trustworthiness of the operation.

Postscript (16/11).

Although "The Australian" gives a reasonably balanced account of most major events, there are some smaller events where subbies seem to favour a view that they might reasonably expect you (Rupert) to hold.   Or perhaps the female subbies exert unreasonable influence over content?

An instance is Berlusconi.  (I understand that News Ltd has been excluded from Italy by Berlusconi).  Silvio is the longest serving (20 years?) Italian PM since WWII.  However he is so castigated in "The Australian" that an impartial observer must wonder just how he ever retained power for so long, and must see his recent resignation as forced.   However on reading Google translate translations of Italian newspapers, alternative explanations appear.  Such as SB resigned until the next election because he did not want to be associated with the extremely unpopular "wealth tax" that the ECB requires.

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