The Middle East - Full of Twits

Twit (noun) - a) someone a bit stupid, but not a moron, b) someone who uses Twitter, Facebook and other social networking media because everyone else does.


"سنخرج بمسيرات في كل مساجد وكنائس مصر الكبرى متجهين ناحية الميادين العامة ومعتصمين حتى ننال حقوقنا المسلوبة. مصر ستخرج مسلميها ومسيحييها من أجل محاربة الفساد والبطالة والظلم وغياب الحرية. سيتم تحديد المساجد والكنائس ليلة الخميس."

"We will go out and rally in all the main mosques and churches of Egypt, heading to the public squares, and sit until we receive our rights, which have been usurped. Egypt's Muslims and Christians alike will emerge to fight corruption and unemployment, injustice and lack of freedom. We will choose mosques and churches on Thursday night."

- Facebook page for the Egyptian "Organisation of the Angry Revolution", 28 January 2011.

90,000 Egyptians signed up to attend.

Sometimes being as individualistic as a sheep can be an inadvertant boon for the spread of "democracy", or should we say the spread of toppling dictators, or should we say the spread of creating political power vacuums.

Such has been the case in that sizzling dust bowl romantically referred to as The Middle East.

A young Tunisan man, banned, fined and spat on by the police for trying to make enough money to feed his family of eight by selling veges in the street, sets himself on fire to protest a final desperate act of freedom under oppression.

A few hundred thousand tweets later and the Middle East is minus two dictators (others pending) and protesting spreads from Morrocco to Iran. Power to the People?

Let's not celebrate until these power vacuums are filled, and with what...

The Mexican-wave of tweeting revolutionaries seems only to have just begun. And what a shock to the world's Middle East, Islamic and Arab speacialist analysts and subject-matter experts, as they are hauled into the offices of their superiors to explain why this massively significant geo-political phenomenon was not foreshadowed.

And like the astrologer, yelled at for not predicting the death of a customer by her sister at last weeks session, yet predicting she would experience a romance and good fortune, all the smart analysts will be chanting "strategic shock?" recalling the same embarrassing response to 9/11.

- a little lesson for "experts": hospitals seem to cope well with strategic shocks (not knowing what's gonna come through their emergency room doors), so why can't the national security community?

Dictators across the planet must be watching the incoming tide with concern directly proportional to their distance from where it all began - the Middle Tweets.

But don't trust appearances. We are not witnessing an Iranian, Russian or French Revolution, the rise of the workers, the poor, the powerless and oppressed masses against overtly heinous dictatorships. We are witnessing a new outcome of an old phenomenon: herd psychology. Viva La Tweetolucion!

The effect: Accidental Revolution.

Through fast, cheap social networking tools, any social movement can now be greatly exaggerated and run out of control, as massive groups of young networked strangers converge in the cyber-world to promote one thing they have in common, thus empowering them with the objective truth that is "lots of people agree with me".

Why is this a bad thing? Because it's fake. Without Facebook and texting there would be no revolt in the Arab world that we are seeing today.

Here's the real issue:

All the protestors are young men, under 25; the two qualities you need to be unemployed in the Middle East and also the target market for fundamentalist groups and anti-government movements.

The trouble is that all 22 Middle East nation-states have arrived at a population distribution causing a "youth bulge". In Iran, 60% of people are under 30! Most Middle Easterners are under 25.

Why is this a problem? Because 25% of 60% of the Middle East are young men with savvy access to cheap portable social networking and communications technology. Most of them have access to e-social networks.

These protests are not a religious phenomenon. It is the insurgency of the Middle East's youth. It is a Mosh Pit.

It so happens that dictators constantly live in fear of a mass rebellion of the people. They each have an exit strategy in place, ready to deploy at a moment's notice: grab the country's money and run to Switzerland.

So, bored and angry young men mass against a paranoid, ready-to-bolt dictator who knows he shouldn't really be there.

Result: another shit political system will ensure nothing much changes after the dust settles.

The important thing for us Westies to watch out for is the replacements. Will they be better or worse for us?

Egypts main opposition party, the Muslim Brotherhood, was founded in 1928. Thanks to the writings and teaching of its leaders, it has inspired the creation of most of the region's Islamist, jihadist anti-West groups around today: including Al Qaeda, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

 Sayyid Qutb in prison: the Egyptian government accused him of plotting to overthrow the state and he was executed in 1966.

The Brotherhood's key thinker was Sayyid Qutb, who's doctrine was instrumental to the Islamist movement in the Middle East and the anti-Western Jihad we've been witnessing since before 9/11.

Qutb's Milestones inspired the young Osama bin Laden and countless other jihadists across the globe.

The Muslim Brotherhood has also inspired the most powerful Islamist groups within Tunisia, Libya and Bahrain.

The advent of cheap and accessible Internet, cell phones and social networking tools were all essential to the current upsurge in mass anti-governmental activity across the Middle East. However, past revolutions did not require such.

The herd mentality was low-tech.

Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, Algeria, Jordan, Palestine, ... within all countries inspired by the recent "successes" of hoi polloi, waiting quietly in the wings are a legion of malevolent and stupid political groups, rubbing their hands together and preparing to rule.


The reward for revolution isn't always good. It may turn out worse for them and worser for us.

Australia’s Richest and Most Powerful: How they got there

Anthony Pratt (AUS $4.3 billion)

Inherited Richard Pratt, his father’s, wealth, businesses and related opportunities.

Anthony Pratt is Chairman and CEO of Pratt Industries and Group Deputy Chairman of Visy Industries, the world’s largest privately-owned paper and packaging company.

Anthony's two sisters and their husbands work in the family business in Australia.

Visy Industries was founded in 1948 by Pratt's grandfather.

In an interview with Business Review Weekly, Pratt described the move to the US as an attempt to establish himself outside the shadow of his successful father. If this were a genuine attempt, he would have established himself without his inherited billions and inherited business contacts, starting from scratch like the rest of us. 

Australia’s Richest and Most Powerful: How they got there

Andrew Forrest (6.7 billion)

Andrew Forrest is the great-great nephew of former Premier John Forrest.

After graduating from WA University with a double-major in economics and politics, he worked as a stock broker. He then became founding CEO of a mining company, Fortescue, in his early 30s.

On 18 February 2011, the Federal Court ruled Forrest had breached the Corporations Law. The Court found he had misled and deceived investors by claiming in 2004 and 2005 that Fortescue had signed "binding" contracts with Chinese entities to build a railway, port and mine in the Pilbara. This announcement resulted in a sharp increase in his company’s share price, with Forrest's own shareholding soaring by more than $200 million.

This was the second time a Federal Court had ruled on the same breach. Back in 2009, Forrest was cleared. ASIC appealed the 2009 decision, before paying the multi-million-dollar legal bill, which was  picked up by taxpayers. For my money, it was worth wiping that fat smile off his face. 

He was educated at the Christ Church Grammar School and Hale School in Perth, along with a legion of wealthy power-brokers:

Christ Church Grammar School alumni include:

• Rod Eddington - former CEO of Cathay Pacific, Ansett Australia and British Airways
• Wayne Martin - Chief Justice of Western Australia since 2006
• Craig Williams - Major General and Commander of 2nd Division (Army Reserves)

Hale School alumni include:

Premiers:

• Rt. Hon. Sir John Forrest, first Premier of Western Australia and a Cabinet Minister in Australia's first Federal Government, sometimes referred to by courtesy as Baron Forrest of Bunbury
• George Leake CMG QC, Premier of Western Australia, and at other times Attorney-General, Crown Solicitor and Director of Public Prosecutions for Western Australia
• Sir Walter Hartwell James KCMG KC, Premier of Western Australia, and at other times Attorney-General for Western Australia, Agent-General for Western Australia in London
• Sir Duncan Ross McLarty, Premier of Western Australia
• Sir Charles Court AK KCMG OBE, Premier of Western Australia
• Peter Dowding SC, Premier of Western Australia (also attended Caulfield Grammar School and The Scots College)
• Richard Court, Premier of Western Australia

Business Leaders:

• Langley Hancock, businessman, discover of the Pilbara iron ore deposits, founder of the separatist WA First Party
• Sir Anthony Langlois Lefroy, businessman, Chairman of the Board, Western Australian Newspapers Ltd
• Sir Edward Lefroy, businessman, Chairman of the Dominion League
• Sir Roderick Proctor, businessman, prominent financier
• Brian Thorley Loton AC, chairman of the board of BHP Billiton (then BHP).
• Richard Goyder, CEO of Westfarmers Pty Ltd.
• Alexander Forrest, landowner, one of the developers of Peppermint Grove, explorer
• Jeff Chatfield, chairman of Skywest Airlines Ltd.
  
  

Judges and Judicial Officers:

• Sir Stephen Henry Parker, Chief Justice of Western Australia
• Septimus Burt QC, Attorney General, 1st Agent General (Acting) of Western Australia, prominent landholder of 4,000,000 acres (16,000 km2) on the Gascoyne and Ashburton Rivers
• George Leake CMG QC, at different times, Attorney-General, Crown Solicitor and Director of Public Prosecutions for Western Australia
• Sir Walter Hartwell James KCMG KC, Attorney General of Western Australia
• Thomas Davy KC, Rhodes Scholar, Attorney-General of Western Australia
• Justice Robert Nicholson AO, Judge of the Federal Court of Australia
• Peter Panegyres AM, Crown Solicitor for Western Australia
• Christian Porter, current Attorney General of Western Australia
• Judge Stephen Scott, Judge of the District Court of Western Australia

Others:

• His Royal Highness The Sultan of Selangor, Sultan of the Malaysian state of Selangor
• David Irvine AO, Director General of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service
• Tony Nutt, Director of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, past Chief of Staff to Prime Minister John Howard
• Sir Ransley Victor Garland, Former Australian Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Former Australian Minister for Business and Consumer Affairs
• Sir Edward Wittenoom, French Consul General for Western Australia, President of the Western Australian Legislative Counsel.
• Sir Walter Hartwell James KCMG KC, Agent-General for Western Australia in London
• William Hassell AM, Agent General for Western Australia in London, Counsel General for Germany in Western Australia

Lesson for the rest of us poor suckers:

It's Not What You Know, It's What School You Went To

 

Australia’s Richest and Most Powerful: How they got there

Gina Rinehart (personal wealth, AUS $9 billion)

As the sole heir, Gina Rinehart inherited her mining magnate father, Lang Hancock's, wealth, businesses and related opportunities.

When she was 29, she married Frank Rinehart, a 57 year old American corporate lawyer. He died in about 1990.

Following the death of her father in March 1992, Mrs Rinehart became Executive Chairman of the Hancock Group of companies.

She commenced an acrimonious legal fight in 1992 with her stepmother, Rose Porteous, over the circumstances of her father's death and control of the Hancock assets. The court cases and negotiations ultimately took 14 years to settle.

In 1999, her proposal to name a mountain range after her family was approved. The Hancock Range is north-west of the town of Newman.

As of 2010, her daughter Bianca Rinehart was a member of the executive management team and a director of several Hancock companies.

It would take you 9,000 years of earning 1 million dollars per year to save Gina's personal wealth. It would take the average Australian 160,000 years.

Comment Rage: Posting Comments and the Will to Kill

"THINK ABOUT IT!!!!! before you go accusing everyone of being fools just for calling this revenue-raising, like Mike is (11/02/2011 11:55:58 AM)"

"I take it your parents didnt love you enough so you are taking it out on everyone? Never had consensual sex in your life? pull your head in and stick to the subject you sensationalist!"

"Go beat and abuse your children you neanderthal." 

"Who is this idiot? Clearly, you dont read much." 

"Could the moderator please explain what is wrong with my last 2 comments?"

"You seem to be doing your usual trick of attacking the small things while leaving the bulk of what I said alone."

"What I have to say to the rest of that comment wouldn’t get through the moderator and would be insulting to your mother but I’ll try to get my previous comment through point by point if that’s ok with you."

(Above: all comments extracted from separate websites)


What do public comment posting sections of websites reveal about human beings and society?

When reading the comments beneath news, current affairs websites and blogs, it's interesting to see how vicious people are to each other.

They'd never behave like that face-to-face.

More than simply making a "comment", many people respond to the response rather than the issue. And that would be fine, but often there is such a disdain for the commentor. More than is necessary, individuals are shot down for making allegedly stupid comments and when that fails to silence, shot down for personal failings.

Comment rage is often personal. Yet it is interesting to note that the person launching the attack would never say such a thing face-to-face (and here's a hint at why it's so popular).

As almost all conscious human behaviour is a facade used to hide the ugly truth, We wondered what was behind the vituperative invective of comment rage and post rage found in Comments Boxes across the cyber world. 

For those fond of studying social behaviour or group psychology, and within the context of modern-day social networking fora, go watch people attack, despise and denigrate each other in any website's public comment posting boxes.

In some cases, one poor devil gets picked on by a large group, the situation having snow-balled out of control from a handful of attackers enticed by the blood-lust human instinct craves at the sight of an overwhelmed weakling - just like in high school, or at the office!

What the hell is going on here? Why are average people transformed into cut-throats as soon as they start reading Comments?

Why? First, why not? Because it's anonymous. There's no repercussion. You can't get in trouble.

And Why? Because you have just satisfied the unsatisfiable. The oldest anti-social survivial instinct. The will to kill. The killer instinct.

The yearing to attack others is very deep within all of us. It is hard-wired into our lizard complex and is the reason we stayed alive the first million years.

Yet we hardly ever, mostly never, get to satisfy this primordial urge. Our imagination gives us relief through vivid fantasies of being that animal for just a minute: after our boss has reprimanded us, after that bully made us look stupid and feel helpless again, after the news report of that rapist, that drunk driver who killed those kids.

But that's as far as the ancient, raw and hideously true instinct gets. Why no further? Why do we not take the will to kill further than our imagination? Fear. Fear of being caught acting on it, fear of going to jail, of being vilified, being sacked, having all that we love taken from us. Fear of doing something wrong. It is wrong to attack someone, isn't it? Or does it depend? Do we want to risk all to find out? Doesn't there have to be a really good reason to attack someone?

We can't go around killing people, but we can attack them in other ways - if they deserve it. But the fear of repercussions from society's moral and governmental institutions stops us from even attacking, even just a little attack.

So we all sit quietly, utterly frustrated.

The price of satisfying the will to attack is too great. Or should I say "was" too great.

Now there's this thing called the Internet. You can hide in it (to a certain degree). You can anonymously join a comments section on a website, get angry at someone and attack them.

You can attack a person's intellect, their reasoning, their inexperience, their argument, their stupidity, their values, their morals. It's awesome!

Sometimes a frenzied horde will join in! Not because they agree with your comment, but because they get caught up in the chase, the hunt, the taunting, teasing and horribly playful game. The pack attacks the wounded weakling, not for food, but for something else. Something natural.

You see it in schools, you see it in the workplace and now you see it on the Internet.

Bruce Lee used to try and consciously summon his killer instinct in order to defeat his opponent. If he was alive today, he would simply use his iPhone to go online and then jettison his target through the air in an orgasm of instinct-satisfaction.

It's now almost completely safe to attack people on the Net. No one knows it's you! You got away with it. Even if they do know your username and generally where you live, they can't do anything about it, because you're never gonna meet.

Oh the freedom! Oh the satisfaction!

Oh how pathetic.

Is Anything Art? - An Analysis of the Mass Nude Idiots Phenomenon

Spencer Tunick takes photographs of naked people for a living. He calls it "Art". But is it?


In 2010, 5000 idiots stripped in front of the Sydney Opera House in the name of "art".

How fitting that such a freak event occur at such a freak of a building.

Like a massive flock of shaved sheep, the art-nudists were expertly steered, organised and positioned by Tunick's shepparding. His support staff providing nuanced direction from the side-lines, like sheep-dogs.

What? Not one boner?

 



A number of questions and thoughts enter the mind of the normal person who witnesses such events:








How do nudists, novice and seasoned, actually bring themselves to do it (especially the heinous, the ugly and the small-pricked)?

It appears that lurking amongst us, disguised in clothing, are thousands of people just bursting to strip in public. How do we explain this? Are they mental or normal? Do they have humility, feel shame?

How are they immune to the centuries-old guilt trip handed down to us over the ages by the Church that we should hide our private bits?



How do the blokes not get erections? Think about it: female naked bodies normally arouse males. It's a trillion dollar industry and necessary element for continuing the human race. Tunick's events should create a sea of woodies followed by a mexican wave of female disgust, slaps and walk-offs.

Does there need to be an artistic reason to support such an activity? There must be some considerable motivation behind this behaviour, as it is no simple task: to participate requires effort, time, transport and logistical arrangements, time off work, etc etc. There are many obstacles presented to the budding art-nudist. They must really mean what they do. Why?

If these people are not psychos, the rest of us normals must shiver a little at why we all don't feel such a need.

Queensland Inundated by Thin Young Girls

The horrific floods in Queensland have resulted in pointless death, misery and destruction whose effects will outlast those left mourning.

Walking amongst these tragedies - filming, dictating the human reaction, carelessly over-using hyperbole to secure a greater market of bug-eyed public for advertising business - is a remarkably inappropriate phenomenon. Standing in the fore-ground of all this abject horror is an army of extremely well-dressed, young, thin and good-looking girls.

This Aryan race of dainty princesses is called on to interpret, analyse, deconstruct the suffering and loss of whole communities with the vocabulary of an ATM.

One knows not which ugly fact to balk and then vomit at first.

If TV news reporters were recruited from the general public, why don't they look like the people they interview in their vox populi pieces? 

"So...yeah." The Wisdom of Sports Interviews

Why does the media interview sports people?

They don't say anything interesting or enlightening or even entertaining.

They just look to the side, stumble through a mental list of banal platitudes, pick one and blurt it out as quickly as possible.

What's even more ridiculous is accosting athletes away from the game, like at the airport. They're tired, grouchy, vulnerable and this on top of an existing inability to summarise the complexities of their athletic achievements.

Perhaps this painfully boring, painfully expected event is so shit to witness because these vessels of intellectual precision are only ever asked lame-arsed questions (or response prompts). Perhaps it's because sports people don't do interesting or enlightening on the fly. Perhaps sports people don't have any idea how they do what they do.

Whatever it is, please stop. Play the game and piss off. We don't need to hear that the game went very well/could've gone better and you'll do better next time, so...yeah.



It appears that using your brain to speak is a challenge beyond the reach of any training, physical fitness, competitive spirit and all that other machismo shit handed down from the stone age.

It appears from the pathetic pithy platitudes that are mumbled from panting athletes on the sidelines, spitting into a phallic microphone wielded by someone less interesting than the microphone, that answering the incisive questions of sports interviewers is just too much for your average sports-person.

But how can it be? How hard is it to anticipate the obvious and respond in kind?

Think about it. You've just won/lost a big game. Some heavily-made-up little girl dressed to go night-clubbing is waiting for you to wander over. She's very likely going to ask you a question along the lines of the "How was the game? What happened?" Simple yet direct.

What else could she ask? "So, how would the battle of Agincourt have gone without the addition of the longbow to the English arsenal?"

Here's a few examples of typical sports interviews:

- Interviewer "He had you five-three in the first set, what were you thinking at that point in the match?"

Rafael Nadal "Well, he was playing fine. I was probably playing a little shorter than usual. He was playing aggressively... just keep fighting and we'll see how we go... He was playing better than I was."


- Interviewer "Well, Sterling, a far more composed performance. You didn't have a lot of ball, but what you did have you did a lot with."

Sterling Mortlock "Yeah... I think it was ah... improvement from last week... pretty positive, ah.. looking at the bench at the end of the match, a fair few injuries, so... we'll have to see how we are for the next few weeks."

- Interviewer "Congratulations. A food first set, but tightened a little for you in the second."

Venus Williams "Yeah, um... I think, you know, she really played well, um... I have to give her credit for really... raising her game... really, ah, she played so well... such a deep ball, you can mix it up... I mean, she has great things in her... she just has to stay healthy."

Wow! Now I completely understand how they played well/badly and as a result won/lost.

Imagine if scientists and innovators were interviewed:

Interviewer "So, Einstein. Well done with Relativity - especially the specific theory. You've made Newtonian physics look sloppy and invalid."

Albert Einstein "Ja, vell, zee sing to remember is zat every sing is relatif. Zere iss no "shloppy", only "shloppier" or "less shloppy".

Actually, how would King Henry's interview gone?



















"Well, Your Highness. Congratulations."
"Thanks, Nicole."
"So, it was looking dicey there when the first left flanking attack failed to split the French main effort. But the longbows had a field day with the French cavalry, when they got bogged down. How did you feel the battle went and what were your key learning points?"
"Well, Nicole, those French bastards sure know how to eat cheese, but their over-reliance on mounted troops was their undoing...


Conclusion: The modern-day sports interview is just dumb. Dumb questions, dumb sports persons, dumb responses. Guys, just play the fucking sport and we'll guess what you would have said... concluding, of course, with "so... yeah."

Fevola - Is This the Arse-End of Australia's Bogan Role Models?

Brendan Fevola:

"Proof that bogans can also reach the dizzying heights of success without having to think about stuff or talk proper." 

Australia's dumbest looking idiot footballer spent New Year's the same way all bogans dream of: threatening the pigs and being a drunk tit - like you did when you were 16.

Vox populi seem to have had enough of the paradox of "inspiring bogans". The people's thoughts captured on Internet media discussion commentary reflects an Australian public that grows weary of its loveable larakins. The older generations honoured and praised their Bogan Heroes - Warick Capper, Paul Hogan, ACDC etc, and even elected one Prime Minister in the 80s. They used to be cute, now they're at best embarrassing and at worst criminal.

Is the tide turning?

The first bogan role-model to inspire doubt into the infallible ancient tenet of bogan-worship was Russell Crowe. Whether the critical mass of betrayal was due to the phone-throwing incident or the fact that bogans don't write poetry is for the academics to debate. But what we do know is that since then Aussies have started slapping a critical eye on the utility of having bogans as role-models for their little shits.

But who else is there to role-model Jayden, Hayden and Kayden, little Maddison, Briyannah and Taylah? Who else is able to fill such a void? ...What?.... Us parents?...

Fuck off!