The TV News Reports but Never Follows Up

Have you noticed that the TV news media report the news, but never follow it up, never offer advice or lessons to learn from what happened?

Example:

TV news media report deaths and injuries from traffic accidents. But they don't report Why it happened, and How we can avoid the same tragedy.

Why?

If it's in the national interest to report a harm, is it not even more important for the national interest to learn why the harm happened, so we can avoid the harm ourselves?

Who is responsible for following up on things? The Government? The Media?

Who cares?

If you decide to report something and decide not to follow it up, then you are responsible for the omission.

Reporting something and not analysing it for the benefit of those reported to is lazy and irresponsible. The true reason for the report becomes evident: to get ratings to sell their TV time to advertisers. The TV news media prove they have no interest in public safety, public awareness by merely reporting shocking events. They seek only to sell their product, to make money. This is disgusting behaviour.

The TV news is conveyed to us in the same format; decades of the exact same method. The TV news media has not progressed or developed its service one iota since it began decades ago.

The leading and lagging national economic indicators are merely displayed as numbers in the finance section. But no media has ever explained these indicators, why they should mean something to all of us - not just rich investors or political actors.

Gold and oil prices are displayed to the nation, but why they are displayed is never explained and remains a mystery to most watching. What do these figures mean or matter? No one explains.

Stock prices are displayed, and never explained. So why display them?

Employment figures are displayed, but the figures are not enumerated into their categories: part-time, casual and temporary employment figures. Why not?

It makes a difference in viewing employment figures whether they are mostly full-time ongoing jobs or merely casual or part-time (2 hours a week?) jobs. The differences are immense. But no enumeration is forthcoming.

Why not?

What most people want to know day to day is how are we all doing? How are others doing? How does this news affect me? The Media choses not to tell us.

We clearly have a gap of need in society and the need for intelligent analysed information. Since the Media and the Government have no interest to fill this information gap, someone needs to step up and fill it.

Arguing is Wrong?

For time immemorial, it has been a lazy and fallacious argument to rebutt with the terms that the argument itself is not worthy of the products expected.

Today, the lazy arguer in public discourse will defer upon recognition of impending defeat that the nature of the argument is not worth continuing.

In raw terms, a person will stop the argument stating that "You are getting aggressive.", "You are being argumentative.", "You are being negative.", "You are denigrating my feelings or beliefs." etc.

This is a cheap way to end one's involvement in a rational argument. Like kicking the chess board when you realise you are about to lose, or picking up the ball and walking home because you are losing the game.

Samuel Johnson said "Prejudice, not being formed by reason, cannot be argued away through reason."

This explains some of the reason for arguments being ceased by the losing side.

Today, it is common place due to Political Correctness that an argument will be ceased by one side based on the negative nature of the argument. PC reminds us that an argument must never offend one side.

Of course, the most important of all arguments will likely come with prejudice, a dearly held belief, a sensitive ego and the potential to offend. This fact of the sensitivity some views hold is the very reason they need to be argued out. Things that hold none of these sensitivities are not worth arguing about.

The questioning of beliefs, of arguments, of claims of fact, demand by their very nature a critical examination to confirm or deny the weight of their claims to truth, certainty or importance.

If the findings of the examination look set to erode the sensitivities of one side, that side will cut the argument short. Thus the issue is not progressed. Scientific discovery could not have proceeded with this sensitivity and behaviour.

David Hume had a simple test: does it contain not number nor tautology nor statement of some fact? Commit it then to the flames.

Hume cuts off at the knees anything claimed that cannot be tested by logic or empirical verification.

Anything else is likely nonsense. Hume is interested in what can be known, what is true, what is certain or verifiable.

However, an argument often seeks more than the truth. There are reasons beyond truth to argue. An argument is used to convince, to persuade, to correct, by identifying more information, a flaw in reasoning or method, an inconsistency. An argument can enumerate the logic of an argument and why it is held, why it was concluded, from where it derived.

This is why argument with even seemingly irrational persons is so important.

Today, we are taught not to argue. Today argument is a dirty word and no sooner has it begun than one side calls for it to end. This is an effect of PC. The argument by its nature will require the dismantling of close-held beliefs, of ego. Feelings will be hurt. Beliefs will be attacked. Ego will be exposed and weakened.

We all need to grow a thicker skin and stand up for what we argue, rather than folding like a cheap suit when we are criticised rationally.

All argument is good. All argument and dispute and disagreement is necessary to progress beyond the caveman.

The costs of arguing are outweighed by the benefits of enlightened, unmolested exchange of reasoning.

We are our own worst critics, so it is left to others to point out our shortcomings in reasoning.

This can only happen in argument, no matter how much it hurts.

South Sudanese Gangs

The reports in the Australian media the last few years on South Sudanese "Gangs", or more accurately pack-like mob behaviour of young male South Sudanese committing violent crimes, especially car-jackings, street fights, home invasions, burglary, rioting and if the police are brave enough to intervene, violent resistance to arrest, identifies a nascent local phenomenon of complex social issues and thus becomes a target for analysis.

This phenomenon conflating race, immigration, crime and terror is widely debated in the public, media, politics and academia and therefore needs the attention that all such debates need: open rational and courageous intellectual analysis and discussion.

The first argument from the Left, from politicians, from the courts and paradoxically the media is that "there is no problem"; there are no Gangs.

What they mean is, the Rightist media and the racist bigots sector has blown this phenomenon out of proportion, misunderstood it. The attacks and crimes committed by these groups is a tiny fraction of overall similar crimes and attacks committed by Joe Public.

As if that makes it all better.

A second argument is that the term "gang" is incorrect. A gang is an established organisation of people sharing a common goal and often using violence and crime against the public and authorities to achieve that goal. A gang has a leadership, a structure, a strategy and is in it for the long-term.

The Left argues that these groups do not meet these criteria. Instead, they are disorganised transient random groups joining together for opportunities to thieve and have fun. Typical youth having a bit of fun.

A third argument is that the negative commentary from the general public about South Sudanese Gangs reveals an abhorent un-Australian racism against "black people" and immigrants that needs to be stopped and corrected, so we can all live in a harmonious and tolerant multi-cultural society.

Identifying these actors as a new phenomenon of third world disgruntled migrants ganging up against their Western hosts is seen as racist, bigotted and in need of re-education.

Thus, with these three arguments being true, there is no problem to debate, the actions of the groups are harmless or too minor to worry about or even discuss, and if you disagree you are racist.

These arguments end up protecting the actions of these groups, and give them support to continue their activities. The groups themselves have tested the public, the courts and the police and have found little resistence, little punishment or vilification and even some support. Anyone who sees what they're really doing and speaks out will be targeted as racist.

That must be very encouraging for them.

As with all important debates, one side tries to shut the other down through ad hominem, the fallacy of arguing by authority, and charges of breaches against the sanctity of political correctness.

This is unfortunately a sign of the times. We live in the age of "if you hurt my feelings, I will shut you down, and the law and Leftists will have my back."

So, what are the rebuttals to the arguments above?

What is the problem and what is the solution?

Only a rational, honest, courageous debate will answer these questions and check the validity of the  debate-halting arguments.

The first argument uses criminal statistics to show these groups are in a tiny minority of offenders on particular crimes identified in the media.

The argument then concludes that because the groups and their crimes are a tiny minority, there is no cause for public concern or fear, or for political, judicial or policing changes than already exists.

Police have been reported to have said to victims and concerned citizens simply to stay indoors.

This argument that quantity is more important than quality assumes the public only care about quantity and not quality. That argument contradicts public feeling.

It has been found globally since 911 that citizens care more about the quality of the crimes than the quantity. More people die in car accidents per year in any given Western city, than by being kidnapped and beheaded or blown to bits. However, ask anyone what scares them most.

The second argument is the term "gang" being misused. Well, as Bertrand Russell once said, wherever possible in serious debate, replace Names with their Descriptions. So the second argument is moot, once the terms are dropped and we starting describing what's happening.

The third argument is a modern day defence of any arguer against an opponent: you're racist, you're being politically incorrect, therefore your argument has no validity.

This argument is neutralised by the counter-argument, "So you are against freedom of speech."

So, the solutions to the problem of South Sudanese Gangs must begin with open discussion. This is normally where such arguments fail to proceed, as one side is shut down.

Once a motive for the activities is determined, we can move to mitigating them and preventing them.

Better integration programmes can be employed, tailored to address immigrant disgruntlement and a range of deterents, such deportation, jail, targeted police raids etc can be designed.

Ignoring the problem does not make it go away. While we're all fighting amongst each other about the nature of the problem, the problem is growing and will transform into something much worse.

Multi-Culturalism or Racist Ghettos?

The term Multi-cultural is proudly bandied about in cliché fashion, by the opiated masses to describe what they insist we must all seek in our modern, good, tolerant societies. The apparently self-evident, endlessly benficial aspiration all modern Western countries must strive for in hosting immigrants: an idyllic, eclectic society of societies, under the paradoxical banners, "We are one, but we are many", "We are the same but different", a society fully integrated yet concurrently needing to be tolerant, a society of "cultures" living together, but not actually together, in a beautiful catatonia-inducing harmony.

The assumptions are impressive: different "cultures" always compliment each other; a multi-cultural society is the best society; a multi-cultural sociey is harmonious; there is no alternative but death and racism; racism is not a feature of a multi-cultural society; there is little to worry about with multi-culturalism; multi-culturalism is good for individualism and can accommodate or compliment all the various types of "cultures" (We call these "ethnosities" rather than "cultures", as "culture" entails growth, development, evolution and change, rather than tradition and conservatism); multi-culturalism is always acheivable, only impeded by racist bigots.

That's the talk. But what are the facts?

Look on the ground at these multi-cultural societies, these Ethnosities, and you will see something different from the rhetoric.

The "cultures" that move into their host countries are almost always from the third or developing world, particularly countries that have been torn apart by racist, religious, ethnic and cultural wars, intolerance and conflict; countries that have failed economically, socially, politically, ideologically. Countries that are either too young to have reconciled with, and transitioned into, modernity, or are too old to break with their barbaric dark-age traditions.

The "cultures" arriving on our desirable shores aim only to inhabit our wealthiest largest cities and then head straight from customs and immigration to the ghetto occupied by only their own kind.

These lucky people then proceed to segregate themselves by choice from their host cultures. No sooner have they borded the airport-city bus than they are met by their people; people from support groups that are set up to support and induct them and only them to their new home (our home).

These are the facts, verifiable by empirical evidence any moron can conduct by walking the streets.

Multi-culturalism on the ground is exclusively metropolitan and more accurately named Multi-Ghetto-ism. Thus anyone can visit, see for themselves, the various ethnic-based ghettoes that feature without deviation in all the world's Western capital and major cities. Their journey has been a time-travelling experience, skipping through the ages of human development into the future, from 7th century goat-herding deserts to 21st century Western civilisation.

Within these ghettoes, each "culture" creates effectively an exclusive community within a community. How integrated is that? Why do they do it?

The goals of multi-culturalism appear in stark contrast to what is seen on the ground: a group of people striving to create a ghetto of their own kind, separate from but living off its host community. Almost exclusively, these cultural ghettos feature only the societal aspects of their former homeland: their religion, their language, their food, their marital practises and ethical belief systems.

The kind of exclusions practised within these ghettos are racist by the very definition used by multi-culturalism advocates themselves:

As if this voluntary separation and exclusion weren't enough to contradict the tenets of multi-culturalist propaganda, these ghetto communities then go further to extend favour and opportunity to only members of their own culture. They hire people only from their culture, buy houses and businesses together, lend money to each other, send their children to schools only from their culture, marry within their own culture, shop at only their shops, let rental properties favouring tenants from or interests that serve their culture, starting small businesses that cater only to their culture, etc etc.

That behaviour is by definition the practise of racism. How ironic that the immigrants are more racist in practise than their hosts; hosts who accuses each other of racism, and the need for the host country to stop being racist.

There is even a common practise for older immigrants not bothering to learn the host language. They don't see the need. Why understand the host if you don't need to? One wonders whether they have any idea which country they're even living in, when there's so much separation between guest and host.

The mainstream public discussion of multi-culturalism is normally at best a bland, neutral one, at worst a self-congratulating, self-righteous utopianist one.

However, as with anything in this Age of Political Correctness, the hardest, most important, discussions are quickly aborted upon the hint of mentioning multi-culturalism might be bad, might be subject to criticism or critical analysis. Such philosophical proponents are vilified, labelled bigots, racists, morally corrupt.

So, fundamentally, there is one simple problem facing any critical, intellectual analysis or even discussion on multi-culturalism or ghetto communities or racism from immigrants:

People are not telling the truth.

People are lying about their true feelings, their true beliefs, their true rational conclusions.

Why?

Three reasons:

1) Ego:

Many people are powerless and insignificant, so they take up causes that can't lose and rave from the soap box their elevated morality, their superior intellect. Taking up a huge global cause makes them feel powerful, righteous, loved, admired, respected. It doesn't matter the cause, as long as it's got tonnes of support, especially in the online mainstream communities.

2)  Fear of Retribution:

Many people won't admit the truth, as they don't want to be vilified, accused of racism, or being attacked for inciting hatred or bigotry, and fear being killed for saying what they really think.

(how ironic: the discussion is racist, but the exclusive practises in the ghettos are not.)

This fear of offending is even solidified with the protection of people's feelings by the Law.

We are talking here about the decades old age of Political Correctness: you can't say anything offensive.

If you asked someone what they really thought about multi-culturalism or living side by side with different cultures, they would be too afraid to tell you the truth.

3) Propaganda:

If you asked different immigrant cultures why they segregate themselves within their host country, choosing to separate themselves from their host culture, they would lie for the same reasons, but in addition they want their culture to appear to be wonderful and harmless.

They will lie to keep up the facade that their culture is harmless and wonderful and tolerant.

So we've established that racism exists across the table, from the immigrants themselves against the host, not only from the host community.

So why is "Racism" (the practise of excluding people and favouring others based on their "race" defined nowadays as culture or ethnicity) so pervasive, globally and historically?

A fundamental truth ignored or feared in debate is the simple fact that people just don't like people who are different from them.

It's instinctive. It's a hard-wired survival instinct practised between and within all species, to preserve the species or sub-species. Fear of strangers is an animal and therefore human quality. It is not cultural or rational. It is not a mental disorder that can be cured. It is not a misguided opinion. It is raw instinct and the compulsion to express it is evidently less than most can bear.

However, there are rational practicalities to explain or justify this instinct. If you share nothing with another group or person, nothing shared in beliefs held most dearly, you cannot expect support, understanding or collaboration. You cannot expect empathy.

We are all drawn to people who share our dearly-held beliefs and understandings about the world, about how to treat people, how to live. You can't expect to maintain your cultural identity and the survival of your own culture, if it has to be compromised by accommodating another.

We are therefore drawn to those who look and behave like us, and equally, we are repelled from those who appear different. This compulsion is directly proportional to the level of difference. The more different you appear, the more repulsive you are. Think of dating websites that match people with people like them, people of similar interests, beliefs, backgrounds.

It's not right or wrong, bad or good, it just is. Look at the world, look at history. War and conflict is fundamentally caused by the repulsion between two groups. The preservation of one culture against dilution by another.

Then there is the resentment by the West of wasted effort.

Western societies spent centuries fighting, dying and suffering to preserve their hard one cultural evolution: the separation of church and state, the empowerment of women and vulnerable groups, the education of their children, especially their daughters, the equality between all, treatment of those with different sexual orientations and genders, treatment of animals.

What did our forefathers, our ancestors fight and die for? Our values, our beliefs, our evolution to modernity.

Many of the immigrant cultures come from countries that have not evolved their own beliefs and societal systems, laws and customs, from the dark ages of humanity we spent centuries escaping at great cost and sacrifice. Many people feel threatened by all this sacrifice and effort being wasted when a culture arrives that practises and even promotes those things we died getting rid of long ago. We're back at square one!

Therefore, there is a stark contrast between the fundamental beliefs and customs of host and guest cultures.

Other contrasted cultural behaviour can be quite patently antagonistic: e.g. the Muslim sacrificial ceremony and Halal practise of slitting the throats of cattle, in contrast to the Hindu protection and reverance of cattle. Thus, the splitting up of post British Raj India into Pakistan, Bangladesh and India.

There are many other irreoncilable practises between cultures living within the same society.

Arranged marriage, marriage of minors, treatment of women, kinds of punishment for crimes, genital mutilation, treatment of animals, influence of relgion in law and politics, dressing in public, shaking hands, covering woman in blankets, the list goes on.

Many claim to tolerate these differences and accuse others of intolerance.

Tolerance is a telling choice of word.

Tolerance becomes a poor indicator of the best kind of acceptance expected between different cultures. Why? Because tolerance in common usage means, "putting up with". Should we not progress from tolerance, if we are to integrate harmoniously with others? Yet tolerance is as far as we have come and it is the greatest level of acceptance expected.

Why should we feel proud that we have only achieved a level of tolerance toward each other? Imagine that as a wedding vow. I promise to tolerate you. How well would that be received?

The old tried and tested term "foreigner" is understandable. We call things and people that make no sense to us, that we can't relate to, that are so different from us, "foreign". And we call immigrants and even tourists, "foreigners".

Look at the different uses of the term: this is all quite foreign to me; foreign affairs.

The French use the term "L'etranger", also meaning "stranger", for our term "foreigner". To the French, people from other countries are "strange". How true.

The proponents of Multi-Culturalism are self-righteous liars and they must be stopped. They propound a corrupt understanding of the problems we face integrating foreigners into our homes. Those seeking truth must unite and take their place in mainstream public debate, so that the discussion can proceed without fear of vilification toward the truth.

Should Multiculturalism be accepted as a society that includes several cultures living side by sude in a parallel culturalism, or should it be the aspiration for diverse cultures to live together?

The term multicultural is meant to signify a society in which multiple cultures live together in one harmonuious nation, but in reality a multicultural society is a society in which different cultures live alongside each other in separate societies withing a society.

Acknowledeging this truth is only the beginning of the conversation in achieving the outcome multicultuarlism pretends to achieve.

Terrorism or Islamism?

The millions of open and public debates across the world over the modern phenomenon of Islamist attacks share a common thread of argument.

One side argues: We need to understand the relationship between the attacks and Islam.

The respondents argue: These attacks have nothing to do with Islam, or "true" Islam.

In every debate where Muslims are present, this defence is consistent: the problem is not Islam or Muslims, but something, anything else, but especially: Western interference, racism, crazy non-Muslim Muslims, mind-altering drugs, gun laws, wrong perceptions of Islam, the Muslim-offending victims who provoke an attack, the minority of such attacks, the weather.

Instead of the debate progressing through defining the problem toward establishing solutions, we're still stuck at debating the definition of the problem.

Therefore, debate does not progress, because it is stopped at the accusation that those identifying Islam as the problem or part of it become themselves the discussion for debate. Anti-Muslim debaters are vilified as racist, intolerant, misguided, immoral and themselves accused of offending 1.5 billion Muslims.

Muslims in the debate want to end the debate before it starts.

This is understandable.

"Good" Muslims are unwilling to have their wonderful religion blamed for atrocities.

If we agree that the murders are caused by a version of Islam, then all Muslims feel victimised and accompliced. Their wonderful belief system is the problem. They feel attacked in debate.

Calling proponents Racist is illogical. Islam is not a Race, it is a belief. Race cannot be chosen. Belief is a choice.

So, calling people racists for arguing that Muslims or Islam is the problem, is not using the term Racist consistently with common usage, as is the case calling a banana an apple.

Islamaphobe is a worse term of which to accuse someone.

A phobia is a psychological disorder that prevents sufferers from carrying out their activities of daily living. A phobia is debilitating to a person's daily life.

So, accusations of Islamaphobia are falacious.

So, the goal of Muslim apologists is to stop the debate, or censor it, to protect the belief system they hold most dearly. It is an ego survival tactic. They use political correctness and laws against vilification to defend their apology and simultaneously stop the debate from investigating the role of Islam.

This is nuts.

Murderers claiming to be Muslim, practising Islam, claiming the tenets of Islam to justify their murder of civilians, shouting Allahu Akbar during their attack, claiming the purpose of their attack is a Muslim jihadi campaign against non-Muslims to replace global society with a Mulsim caliphate, are judged as acting with no relation to Islam. Really?

In public debate, is our goal to preserve people's feelings, or to fight for the truth?

Who today has the courage to call out the inconvenient truths?

How can society address the issues threatening the peace and peace of mind of us all, if we can only debate those things that won't offend or upset people?

The term Terrorist Attack is a euphamism. What people are thinking when they use the term is Islamist Attack, or Attacks by Muslims.

Bertrand Russell once said, the pursuit of precision destroys certainty. In the same sense, the pursuit of truth destroys political correctness.

And vice versa.

Discrimination - A Dirty Word?

There is a quality of reasoning that everyone who reasons, values highly. But a term that signifies this invaluable quality has been hi-jacked by pop culture as a pejorative, denigrating term.

This intellectual activity is the ability to separate things, concepts, ideas from each other. It is a discerning quality, we all have to differentiate things.

Whenever you separate good from bad, useful from useless, harmful from innocuous, you are discriminating.

Discrimination is one term we use to signify this quality of separating things out. We all discriminate all the time.

Yet, a word search in pop media, vox pop, debating, and even policy and law, will reveal that the term "discrimination" is bad, is misused to signify a kind of close-minded intolerance or bigotry.

As thinkers, We need to take this term back and re-educate the ignorant masses.

Discrimination is vital for happiness, security, understanding and effectiveness in all activities.

Yet, "Don't discriminate!" is the mantra of our age.

"Discriminating against people is bad." is the new morality.

Why does the term "discrimination" get such a bad rap?

How this pejorative use of "discrimination" came about what was through the recent phenomenon of the media sound-bite.

A sound-bite is a lazy abridgment of a complex issue: it is used by the media, marketing companies, advertising industry and politicians, and therefore used in policy speak, as politicians anticipate their sentences of policy being dumbed down to a phrase - a sound-bite.

So, the original language used by a politcian would have been something like, "Our society should strive against the negative discrimination against people based on their race or creed."

The media would have sound-bitten this statement into something like, "Politician fights racial discrimination."

It doesn't help when the UN and governments use the same lazy sound-bites, especially in the titles of legislation and policy, such as quoting the "Anti-Discrimination laws".

We want to remind everyone that discrimination is a valuable intellectual tool, uniquely human that names an intellectual activity of separating the complex into the simple and revealing thus the key differences between things.

Citizens of the world. Discriminate!