TRUMP OR CLINTON?

DEFINITION 1: Fuss.

fuss (noun, verb): the crisis management of trivia.

"THE COLD WAR IN AN EARLIER PHASE"

Some peoples have the mixed fortune to live on the fault lines between frequently clashing civilisations. Prominent among these are the Palestinians, caught between the hammer of (western) Israel and the anvil of the (eastern) Islamic world, and further north on the Black Sea we find the Crimeans. A famous civilisational clash occurred there (October 1853 – February 1856), between the British Empire, France, the Ottoman Empire and Sardinia on the one side and Tsarist Russia on the other. 

In 1950, A.J.P. Taylor wrote in his essay Crimea: the War that Would Not Boil:

John Bright, with ponderous Victorian wit, called the Crimean War "a crime"; most historians have presented it as a bewildering series of diplomatic and military blunders. With the experience of the last five years to enlighten us, we should do better: we know that the diplomatic tangles since 1945, which may seem bewildering to the future historian, conceal the reality of 'the cold war' . The Crimean War was the cold war in an earlier phase. Two world-systems, mutually uncomprehending, lurched against each other, each convinced of its defensive good-faith. The struggle between them was fought in a ragged way at the edges. Both sides shrank from the head-on collision which would have produced a war to remake the world — Russia from lack of strength, the Western Powers from lack of conviction, Though the Crimean War seemed indecisive, great decisions followed from it. Without it neither Germany nor Italy could have been united; without it Europe would never have known "the liberal era ", that halcyon age which ended in 1914 and which, for centuries to come men will regard as 'normal times', just as the barbarians looked back to the peace and security of Augustan Rome.

- A.J.P. Taylor, From Napoleon to Lenin: Historical Essays, Harper, NY 1952, p 60. 

I have long been a keen student of history, and have had the privilege of knowing some of Australia's finest historians, including Professors Russel Ward and Manning Clark.

One time in conversation with Ward the subject of the Crimean War came up. Knowing little about it, I asked him what he thought of it. 

He replied that it was still a mystery to him, too. The best explanation he had ever heard, however, had come from his old history master at the school he attended in his youth. In response to that very same question in (the boys only) class, the master had replied along the following lines:

"Well, argument rages amongst historians on that. But the fact was that the English wanted to have it out with the Russians, and one day someone in the Foreign Office took a look at the map. There was Russia, with the Crimea hanging down underneath it like a great pair of testicles, and so they made their decision straight away. That would be an excellent place to give 'em a kick."

Still an explanation as good as any around today. 

I FIND AN ENORMOUS SATISFACTION OF MY OWN...

Readers, you will both be aware of the recent tilt by Gina Rinehart (at around $20,000,000,000 worth of assets, the world’s richest woman) to take over Fairfax Media, publishers of arguably the only worthwhile newspapers in Australia. If she had succeeded, we would have been left with a choice of reality according to:

(a) Rinehart, or 

(b) Murdoch, or

(c) the ABC, or

(d) the bloggers, twitterati, facebookers and other denizens of the electronosphere. 

As for Murdoch and Rinehart, I leave it to philosophers, demonologists, exorcists and people far more qualified than I am to decide which would have been worse: or even if there was perhaps the slightest chance of the hope of a possibility of maybe any difference between the two of them.

But Rinehart’s takeover project stalled, and she suddenly became as interested in that project as a cat is in a mummified canary. Clearly, someone drew her attention to the writing on the wall: If you wait long enough, Gina, you will buy the whole Fairfax business for the value of its real estate. Forget the buildings, and the iron-age printing junk they contain; it is all in the queue waiting to go down the plughole, there to join the colossal wrecks (Shelley’s phrase) of the bygone glory days, when eyeshade-wearing journalists traded in tips, hunted for scoops, clacked away on mechanical typewriters and yelled for copy boys to come and carry the paper products of their fervid and competitive imaginations down to whichever compositor clanking away on the print floor far below.

The Coalition now looks like moving to ‘deregulate’ the Australian media.  (Read increase the control and reach of the monopolists and barons, such as are left.)

Current rules prevent a single media company from owning a commercial TV broadcasting licence, a commercial radio licence and a newspaper in the same city – known as the ''two-out-of-three rule''. Commercial free-to-air TV networks are also prevented from reaching more than 75 per cent of the population.

Read more here. 

Malcolm Turnbull has also weighed in:

''Why, in an age when the internet has become the super platform ... which everyone has access to ... why do we need to have platform-specific ownership rules dealing with newspapers and radio and television?" Mr Turnbull said.''My view is the arrival of the internet, and the additional diversity and avenues for competition that it brings, really says we should have less regulation and more freedom.''

Read more here. 

The Internet has indeed become the ‘super platform’. The problem is that no press baron has worked out how to make money from it. Rupert Murdoch has tried every trick he knows: paywalls (don’t work); ‘free’ goodies with every subscription (don’t work). Also etc (which hasn’t worked either.) Among the few who have succeeded are proprietors of the enormously successful search engine Google, who make their money not from paywalls, but from the read-if-you-are-interested advertising, totally beyond the capabilities of any TV network.

The newspaper proprietors are damned if they use the Net,  and damned if they don’t. If they don’t put their product: news stories, comment and such on it, their ‘customers’, consumers, followers – call them what you will – will simply go elsewhere. Ultimately those non-paying ‘customers’ can go to the ABC , which is taxpayer-funded. (As right-wing commentators never tire of reminding us.)

Hence wishlist demand No 50 of the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA):

“50. Break up the ABC and put out to tender each individual function.”

I am sure that Tony Abbott only wishes in turn that he was game enough to do just that. But the cost would be splitting his own support base, which is by no means as united on the issue as is that collection of market-fundamentalist dimwits known as the IPA. Coalition voters are not by any means gulled by the likes of Rupert Murdoch and his stable of eager flunkeys.

Not that it matters all that much. The free-to-air broadcasters have been hit hard by both the Internet and modern TV sets. (I find an enormous satisfaction of my own every time I touch the button on the TV remote labelled ‘mute’. It somehow compensates for all those powerless years sitting through the ads, whose target audience has always seemed to me to be around 13 years old.) But the print media are the hardest hit of all.

I used to buy at least one newspaper a day, and three on Saturdays. That was when (a) I had a lot of time to read them, and (b) I could not get their main content for nothing. Now they are on course to occupy the same exalted relationship to literature as the dinosaurs enjoy with respect to biology.

I do buy the odd newspaper when I cannot access the Internet. But every time I go into a paper shop and see the pathetically small stacks of them I wonder how long they can last, and why their owners still bother.

But to function at all, a democracy needs a freely-spoken press and media. And one outlet is not anywhere near enough. A publicly-owned ABC monopoly would be only slightly less worse than a Rinehart-Murdoch duopoly.

However, right now Tony Abbott (he of the ‘Great Big New Tax’) has a great big new chance to make a great big new difference to the information scene in Australia. We do not need the dinosaur media, but we sure as hell need the here-and-now journalists.

So here is my suggestion to Tony Abbott and whoever comes after him:

1. Retain the ABC, and expand its Internet operations.
2. Open its website to allow any and all writers who wish to put their news, commentary or other information on there to do so.
3. Pay each of them (ie out of state revenue) according to the traffic or number of genuine independently audited ‘hits’ their contributions generate. (Yes, Andrew Bolt, your loyal followers should ensure that you do quite well out of it.)
4. It follows from the above that there cannot reasonably be any ABC editorial control over content, beyond the usual ABC warnings about strong language and disposition to outrageous if not violent behaviour.

 Only another knuckle-dragging Neanderthal man would want to follow the urgings of the market-fundamentalist Neanderthals of the IPA and seek to terminate the ABC. Not when there is an alternative like this one, however modestly proposed.

THE SWITZERLAND OF AUSTRALIA

Let me ask you, dear reader, a question. Which lake when full, has its surface it the highest altitude above sea level: Lake Burley-Griffin, in Canberra, or Lake Geneva, in Switzerland?

Instinct probably told you Lake Geneva, but wariness probably then trumped that, warning you that there was a trick in the question. So on that basis alone you probably guessed that it was Canberra’s lake. But don't worry. You are still right. Lake Burley-Griffin’s surface is at 555.93 metres (1,823.9 ft) above sea level. Lake Geneva, at 372 metres above sea level, is the lower of the two. Canberra itself has an elevation of approximately 580 metres (1,900 feet ).                                                                                                                                                         

One factor which must be taken into account is the latitude of each city. Geneva is about half way between the Equator and the North Pole at 46.2°N. Canberra at 35.3° S is only about one third of the way from the Equator to the South Pole. To be comparable with Geneva it would have to be at the same elevation, but at the latitude of Hobart, or of Dunedin in New Zealand.

But I think I have presented enough evidence so far to establish the credentials of the Australian Capital Territory, centred on Canberra, as the Switzerland of Australia.

                     ---oooo000oooo---

So to our next question: the following villages, towns and cities are listed in alphabetical order.

Geneva, Switzerland     

Guthega, NSW 

Jindabyne, NSW              

Lausanne, Switzerland  

Thredbo, NSW

Zermatt, Switzerland     

Zurich, Switzerland

               

See if you can list them in order of increasing height above sea level. (For the answer*, scroll down.)                                                                                                                                                                                                           

The scenic little town of Zermatt, which as the name suggests sits below the famous and towering Matterhorn, is about Switzerland’s highest significant settlement, though the little village of Juf (population 30) is about 500 m higher. Surprisingly perhaps, Guthega NSW, which is Australia’s highest village, is only 30 m lower than Zermatt, though the latter is 10 degrees closer to the North Pole than Guthega is with respect to the South Pole.

Of course, everything I have mentioned so far is dwarfed by the highest mountain on any planet in the Solar System, which is Olympus Mons on Mars, whose summit is 22 kilometres above the level of its base.

The *answer is: Geneva         (375 m) Lausanne     (601 m) Zurich            (869 m) Jindabyne    (915 m) Thredbo       (1365 m) Guthega       (1590 m) Zermatt        (1620 m)

      

And now, immediately below is a fuller list of mountain summits and settlements, listed again in order of increasing height above sea level, except for the last: 

                   

Khancoban - NSW	329.25m
Mount Wellington (above Hobart, Tas)	1,271m
Thredbo	1,365 m
Guthega	1,590 m
Denver	1,609.3 m
Zermatt  (pop in high season 20,000)	1,620 m
Juf, Switzerland (pop 30)	2,126 m
Mt Kosciuszko summit	2,228 m
South Base Camp, Nepal	5,364 m
Mount Everest summit	8,848 m
Olympus Mons (on Mars) 22 km	22,000 m

Only 30 vertical metres separate Guthega and Zermatt. Denver, on the high plains of Colorado and the highest large city in the US, is smack-bang in between the two of them. (The highest US state capital, by the way, is Santa Fe in New Mexico.) But a glance at the list below shows that my beloved little Snowy Mountains resort village of Guthega, NSW is officially only 20 m below Denver, and 30 m below Zermatt.