#van badham

[colinwsmith]

https://piptheatre.org/banging-denmark/

Superbly cast, racy, and razor sharp. Well done, team PIP Theatre! Chookas for the closing weekend!

[proceduralbob]

The power of participatory media to delude people into terrorist acts used to be the stuff of nightmare fiction. Fellow Canadian and horror filmmaker David Cronenberg explored McLuhan's theories of 'senses and nervous systems' surrendered to media manipulation in his 1983 movie Videodrome. ... When Cronenberg made Videodrome in 1983, it was just a horror movie. Now, as this story I am about to tell you explains, the hallucination is here.

QAnon And On: A Short and Shocking History of Internet Conspiracy Cults, Van Badham

[tomorrowusa]

[I]t’s time to face we are in the era of Brownshirts Without Borders.

Van Badham, Australian author of QAnon And On: A Short and Shocking History of Internet Conspiracy Cults. Quoted at The Guardian. 

Ms. Badham sees the anti-vaxxers, QAnon followers, insurrectionists, and other pro-authoritarian conspiracy nuts as part of a loosely connected common movement – despite being active in different countries.

Across these countries, protestors appear as a wild herd of “sovcit”, anti-vaxxer, QAnonner and more nefarious fellow travellers, alongside some more ordinary people. Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether social media content about these events has been gathered by extremism monitors, or comedians.

Participants unwilling to be injected with a free vaccine safely used on hundreds of millions of people further advise each other that drinking one’s own wee is curative and somehow “camel urine deals with cancer”.

[ ... ]

But the relevant historical lesson is that the threat to democracy doesn’t come from the proportion of the people these groups can claim to represent. It’s about the size of the damage they are willing to do. 

When the actions of these people cross the line into terrorism they should be treated accordingly.

[mtr-amg]

(via A prime minister who lives by the photo op dies by the photo op – and Grace Tame owes Scott Morrison nothing | Van Badham | The Guardian)

This was the Scott Morrison who told the march of sexual violence survivors and their allies who Tame accompanied to Parliament House that the women were lucky to have not been “met with bullets”. The Scott Morrison who ignored key recommendations in the Respect@Work report, the Morrison who did not demote the minister who called alleged rape victim Brittany Higgins “a lying cow”.

This is the Scott Morrison who elevated to assistant minister for women one Amanda Stoker – after Stoker had promoted men’s rights activist Bettina Arndt, who herself had platformed the man who raped Tame as a child. The Scott Morrison who responded to Tame’s speech at last year’s Australia Day awards ceremony with the remark, “Well, gee, I bet it felt good to get that out.”

Morrison, a world leader and adult man, who infamously had to have it explained to him by his wife why sexual violence was bad.

[lightshinesoutofdarkness]

If a critical mass of women cease to believe that justice serves them, they will apply justice of their own.

Van Badham

[mtr-amg]

The first concerns an interview with Labor’s Bill Shorten in GQ, which Newscorp reviewed with the title “Shorten drops F-bomb and reveals biggest career regret”. Shorten swearing is hardly news – at least not for anyone with the ability to imagine what goes on in a Labor caucus room. But the “bomb” was dropped in regards to Shorten’s criticism of the government’s attachment to the infamous TPP free trade deal – a document to which no one but the Coalition has been privy. For generations, the right-faction Labor leadership from which Shorten was spawned has exercised excruciating caution in its public views on trade and finance. Yet “What the fuck?” came from Shorten to GQ, “They can’t even provide us with how the agreement benefits people.”

A lesson in the power of feminism via Jacinda Ardern, Michaelia Cash and Bill Shorten | Van Badham | Opinion | The Guardian

[red-flag-news]

Van Badham’s recent Guardian piece, “Time to hail Hillary Clinton – and face down the testosterone left”, goes well beyond the usual defence of Clinton as a lesser evil, characterising her not only as committed to social equality, but as the literal embodiment of it. It is not hyperbolic to say that the piece could have been written by any of the lead spokespeople for the Clinton campaign. The only reason something so offensively right wing is being responded to by the left is because of Badham’s reputation and claim to be some sort of raging leftist (the descriptions of herself vary from anarchist to feminist to “explicitly socialist” – as she says in the article.) It’s impossible for the claim to be an “explicit socialist” to have any legitimacy when you’re fawning over one of the most notorious neoliberal war hawks of the international ruling class. So Badham pre-empts criticism by accusing everyone who disagrees with her of being “brocialist” or “manarchist” bullies. Supposedly all of the men who oppose Clinton on a principled left wing basis or disagree with Badham on Twitter or Facebook are just terrible misogynists, while women who do likewise have just been duped by the “Bernie bros” and got caught up in the popular testosterone fuelled sport of tormenting Van Badham. That Badham thinks of herself as some sort of anti-establishment martyr for women is laughable, especially in the context of her latest piece. It’s also insulting. It’s an insult – to the victims of US imperialism, workers fighting for minimum wage (including those at the corporation Clinton helped defend, Walmart), African Americans being brutalised by the police, and many others – to suggest that their reality is just “propaganda” in a nasty anti-woman crusade against Clinton and Badham.

SARAH GARNHAM for Red Flag newspaper, Van Badham’s defence of Hillary Clinton is insufferable right wing crap

[ferrerochell]

My ovaries made me do it.

So I’ve been watching the facebook fallout to comments made on Q and A last night. Now this is not an unusual thing for a tuesday. There is always something that is said that is insightful or controversial that does the rounds on social media the next day. Usually I look at it, watch the clip linked in the articles and then go about the rest of my day. But today it has been really eating at me and pissing me off what was said, and that it is still ok to say this to a woman to silence her. 

“I think you’re just being hysterical”

This was a comment made by Steve Price, a conservative middle aged white male radio announcer said to Van Badham, a female journalist when she argued that Steve Price saying that a comment made by Eddie McGuire, a white middle aged  male media personality and owner of the Collingwood AFL Club saying that he would pay $50,000 to watch Caroline Wilson, a female journalist drown was just “a joke” and  “a bunch of blokes laughing at things they shouldn’t be laughing at”. When Badham rightly went on to say that the comments made by McGuire and Price caliing the comments a joke that went too far are a part of a culture that makes violence against women acceptable and a part of “cultural attitudes that treat women differently” he got all defensive, talking over the top of her saying that she needed to retract her statements as he has never made a sexists joke and doesn’t want to be painted in the same light as the men who made the comments about Caroline Wilson. So he made it about him. As Badham continued he said “Just because you're a woman, you're not the only one who can get upset about this." Followed by "Men can be just as upset about these things.", again making it about him and not the real issue. And finally, once Badham had finished making her point and answered the question, Price called her hysterical, as a way to silence her and shut down her opinion. 

Ok, time to rewind as to how we got here. On Q and A Tarang Chawla shared his story and asked a question of the panel. This was after Sam Newan, a white middle aged male media personality and former AFL player defended McGuire’s comments about Caroline Wilson. 

"My sister Nakita was stabbed to death by her partner in January last year with a meat cleaver. She was 23. How will politicians and the media play a better role in bringing about long overdue cultural shifts so tragedies like what happened to my family are not normalised?"

Ok, my turn to rant. Domestic violence is not a joke. Violence against women is not a joke. It is a leading cause of death and disability in women under 45 in Australia. This is a real issue effecting women. The comments that McGuire made are disgusting. Yes, he apologised as you said Steve Price, but this was only after a public backlash and it wasn’t a true apology. Any apology that contains the word “if” is not a true apology. Also doesn’t change the fact that he said it. These comments reflect overwhelming the cultural attitudes that normalise domestic violence and lessen its impact and trivialise the experiences of the women who suffer this. You took a question from the brother of a woman who was a victim of domestic violence and used it as opportunity to defend your friends. That is despicable. When Bedham called you out on this and talked about how we needed to change the cultural values that see women treated as lesser beings you continued to defend your friends and asking that she retract her statements as she had blown the incident out of proportion and that you didn’t wanted to be painted in the same light, talking over her while she was making her point. You made it about you and were too arrogant to realise it. That is despicable. You told her, again talking over the top of her, that just because she is a women doesn’t mean that she the only one allowed to be upset about violence against women and that men are angry too. Steve Price, she has every right to be angry. This is an issue that directly effects her and the women in her life. And yes, men can be angry too. But saying “not me. I didn’t do it. I would never do it” is not a way to show that you’re angry at the issue. It makes it about you. If you want to show your anger and support,then stand in solidarity with the people fighting it and the victims of this issue. You talked over her and talked down to her while she was talking about the real issue of the cultural attitudes that need to be talked about and addressed and changed in order to make violence against women a thing of the past. You basically proved her point. Badham spoke passionately and with conviction about a issue that directly effects her. And for that she gets called hysterical. A word that is loaded. A word that has been used for thousands of years to degrade women and make them less then men. A word that used to say that women were incapable of rational thought because they had a womb and ovaries. You used that word to shut her up and silence her. You proved her point Steve Price. You made yourself a prime example of the cultural attitudes that allow violence against women to thrive in our society. You are not a part of the solution. You are a part of the problem Steve Price.