tallowood wrote on Jan 16^th, 2026 at 7:03pm:

You feel that a person's behaviour changes written words in a file or book? 
And so, you hear voices in the room? Cockroaches have AI and are staring at you?

tallowood wrote on Jan 16^th, 2026 at 6:24pm:



A proceduralist ethos of mutual respect – so widely adopted as to “become second nature” – was thereby firmly embedded as a shared ideal in the nation’s democratic culture.

That culture has now been dramatically eroded, if not altogether shredded.

Most obviously, an Islamist rhetoric of religiously inspired hatred has been allowed to flourish, creating the conditions for escalating acts of intimidation and violence.
This rhetoric has been amplified by elements of the left that, animated by a deep hostility to the West, have lent their muscle to efforts to silence voices they detest. And far from standing firmly against such outrages, many of today’s self-proclaimed “creatives” – ranging from artists to academics – have excused them while openly defending their perpetrators.

We were unable to identify, for example, even a single instance in which Sarah Ferguson or Laura Tingle – both salaried employees of the ABC – publicly opposed any one of the 40 or so “cancellations” of Jewish artists, speakers and academics that have occurred since October 7, 2023. Their incandescent indignation at the decision to rescind Randa Abdel-Fattah’s invitation to Writers Week is therefore not merely another expression of the ABC’s indifference to its obligation to be, and to be seen to be, politically neutral. Like the statements issued by many of the other protesters, it is manifestly hypocritical.

But hypocrisy is not just a character flaw; it subverts the evidentiary trust on which moral and civic evaluation depends. For that reason, Dante Alighieri placed hypocrites in the sixth Bolgia of the Divine Comedy’s Hell, as exemplars of duplicity’s vilest form: the masking of evil beneath the appearance of good.

Because hypocrisy works by cloaking deception in the garb of virtue, Dante’s punishment is exact. Hypocrites are forced to wear cloaks of dazzling beauty but of crushing weight – a burden that discloses the truth their surfaces were designed to conceal.

Deception draped in the language of free speech
Seldom has that judgment been more appropriate than here, where deception has been draped in the language of liberty of expression. It is, after all, indisputable that Abdel-Fattah – who scarcely pretends to be a disciple of John Stuart Mill – is no defender of free speech.

Rather, she claims freedom for herself while denying it to others. Worse still, she endorses a form of vigilante politics in which organised mobs intimidate or suppress the speech of real or alleged Zionists, whom she refuses to treat as fellow Australians.As Abdel-Fattah frankly put it, “If you are a Zionist, you have no claim or right to cultural safety. And it is my duty as somebody who fights all forms of oppression and violence to deny you a safe space to espouse your Zionist racist ideology.”


South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas was therefore right to observe that this advocacy of harassment and intimidation renders her an entirely unsuitable speaker, especially at an event supported by taxpayers, a group that includes the people whose safety she regards as legitimately expendable.

In demanding a platform, Abdel-Fattah seeks to convert into a right what is merely a privilege: a privilege whose sole condition is the mutual respect she has repeatedly rejected.

That ought to be uncontentious. That it has instead generated so much heat is deeply revealing. It highlights the essence of the issue we must now confront: how a liberal society, grounded in tolerance, should respond to those who invoke the freedoms it affords for the sole purpose of destroying them.

Frank wrote on Jan 19^th, 2026 at 10:55am:

eh what..
they all resigned..
who embedded it?

chimera wrote on Jan 19^th, 2026 at 11:01am:

It would be easy to dismiss the tempest surrounding Adelaide Writers Week as a storm in a teacup, stirred by serried ranks of second-rate intellectuals marinating in a steam bath of emotion. But the controversy exposes something far more serious: our difficulty in mastering the lessons of the crisis that has confronted Australian society since October 7, 2023, and that found its most horrific expression in the murders at Bondi Beach.

That crisis cuts to the heart of the assumptions underpinning Australia’s democratic order, notably the belief that our shared civic framework is sufficiently robust to contain – even discipline – the passions that inevitably mark a free society.

Central to that order is an expectation of self-restraint, ensuring that we treat one another with mutual respect so disagreements do not degenerate into brawls or dislikes into outright hatreds. Equally taken for granted is the conviction that, however searing our differences, they do not cleave the country into warring camps in which one side claims a licence to intimidate, silence, harass or even assault the other.

Laura Tingle and others epitomise the ABC’s indifference to its obligation to be, and to be seen to be, politically neutral. Picture: ABC
Laura Tingle and others epitomise the ABC’s indifference to its obligation to be, and to be seen to be, politically neutral. Picture: ABC
Yet none of these traits is a gift of nature. They are instead the hard-earned product of our history, which from the outset forced previously hostile groups of English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish settlers to learn how to live together. By the 1850s, as self-government was being established and mass-suffrage democracy was sweeping through, a “democracy of manners” had begun to emerge – one in which settlers of widely differing origins were expected to treat one another with informal friendliness at best and laconic toleration at worst.

It would be absurd to claim that this standard was always met: no society ever has or will. But there was a substantial consensus about the standard itself, repeatedly affirmed by prominent churchmen, leading writers and the press. Indeed, for authoritative voices to denounce the norm as such would have been virtually unthinkable.

Instead, the period’s intellectual elites actively promoted civic education that inculcated habits of mutual respect and elevated them into a civic duty.

Learning how to be a good citizen
At the same time, the practices essential to democratic freedom were woven into everyday experience. To take just one example, Westminster rules and procedures proliferated through handbooks circulated across the colonies and were assiduously applied in the governance of the innumerable voluntary bodies that peppered the social fabric: friendly societies, mutual-improvement and progress associations, bowls clubs, debating and chess clubs, Mechanics’ Institutes, as well as the committees formed to run libraries, community halls, hospitals, schools and charitable institutions.

It was in these institutions, writes historian John Hirst, that Australians “learned how to be good citizens: to listen to opposing arguments, to respect the rulings of the chairman and to accept that voting decided issues”. A proceduralist ethos of mutual respect – so widely adopted as to “become second nature” – was thereby firmly embedded as a shared ideal in the nation’s democratic culture.

That culture has now been dramatically eroded, if not altogether shredded.

ibid

Frank wrote on Jan 19^th, 2026 at 11:09am:

No no no.
no arguments, please.
This is Australia.  Arguments destroy what's written by authors on paper. They burn into your brain like ants under your skin. The ants argue with you and read your thoughts.

It's curious to read who was on the Board of the Writers' selection.
L Adler is a uni book publishing exec, which is not necessarily for literary skill.
T Whiting is a marketing exec.
Mary Couros is in real estate and local government and was guilty of conflict of interest actions. So she has little sense of ethics.

Not literary experts but execs.  $ status news. No wonder the premier had a grip on them.

Yes I answered in #129, # 130.
Your quote is against what you want to see.