How Ground Zero may look according to those protesting against the so called Ground Zero mosque.

The reality.

Look the three rural independents – they’re all adults, they’re all patriots…

Patriot – A person who submits to the will of the Liberal party.

No political analysis just a personal observations on why I voted for The Greens and not Labor. The simple reason is real moral leadership. Not “moral” in the limited, bigoted, intolerant sense as usually employed by family first types, but real leadership that doesn’t demonise a disadvantaged group for the sake of votes.

What Labor did, by matching the Liberals in rhetoric regarding the boat people, advocated any moral leadership and made it beholden to a bunch of irrational xenophobes in a land locked electorate who feared the arrival of a few thousand people by boat many of thousand of kilometers to the north. The stupidity of all this wonderfully captured by The Chaser.

I suspect if Labor had ignored the ignorant it would not have made much difference to the campaign. The Liberals were brilliant in forcing Labor to fight parts of the campaign on their own terms.

Labor does have some good policies such as the NBN and the Mining Tax but failed to even sell those properly to the electorate. And the ridiculous intransigence on gay marriage shows Labor lack any electoral guts whatsoever.

I’m not stuck to The Greens. I’d be happy to rejoin the Labor fold. But for that to happen Labor will need to become a braver, more confident party. One that is not afraid to bring real leadership (ala Hawke and early Keviun Rudd) and not be captive to News Ltd, marginal voters nor the careerist party executives who lack any vision beyond the next poll. The destruction of NSW Labor next March may help rid Federal Labor of the cancerous influence of the NSW right once and for all. But I somehow doubt it given the propensity of those most responsible for Labor’s stumbling, bumbling, fumbling campaign to acknowledge reality.

I do know some good people in the grass roots of Labor. I hope their voices can find a way to be heard as the party would do well to listen to them and not the hollow voices that guided Labor to electoral disaster this time around.

Gillard may be an atheist but she is a politician above all else. Self interest and a desire to be re-elected are the primary motivations rather than a consistency in beliefs. Where every vote counts, any principles go overboard in attempt to find favour with any special interest group. And while the Christian lobby doesn’t have as much power as politicians give them credit for, they are are noisy and that works.

Over at Gladly, the cross eyed bear there is an interesting 3 part series title A Cast Against School Chaplaincy. Glady raises some very important concerns about school chaplains and their ability and qualifications to deal with many student issues that will require counseling.

Real damage can be done to students via this program.

Iran does seem to have a thriving if isolated underground music scene. Below are two clips from the documentary Global Metal with interviews from people involved in Iran’s metal scene and interesting comments about metal on the Middle East in general.

And while Mullins does take Perth’s Catholic Archbishop Barry Hickey to task for his intolerance, Mullins fails to note his own in declaring that atheists should remain in the closet. Amusing his tagging of Gillard’s mild statement on her lack of beliefs as being “out and proud.” Obviously religious politicians can say whatever they want but heaven forbid an atheist politician making a reasonable statement concerning their views.

Mullins then uses Hickey as a proxy to be concerned at the rise of an European style secularism hindering the rights of churches. I doubt this would happen in Australia given the difference in cultural contexts.

Anyway, Gillard is not the first Australian atheist prime minister. The idea of Prime Minsters needing to profess a faith is very new and mainly the fault of Rudd’s god bothering on his way to Prime Minister. You only need to look at the US to see what happens when religion and politics mix. Mammon always wins with God relegated to just a few catch phrases to win over the gullible.

I can remember a debate online back around 1996 or 1997. It was about mp3s. There was one chap who was arguing that no-one will download mp3s and there was no future in the format. Remember this was when most people had a 33k modem and ascii was still a viable medium for porn. Of course, history proved this fellow wrong as once modems and broadband became more prevalent, the mp3 format via some good fortune became the standard format for music files.

Now this is not the most rigorously researched piece but I wager that when the NBN is completed, the technology will develop to take advantage of the network and provide a lot of money to smart people with ideas. This will lead to a changes how we do things both personal and business.

Of course you have to wait and see if I am right but the NBN if completed will prove to benefit Australia far beyond the telcos.

But councillor Jeff Strickson urged approval, saying traffic impact would be small.

“We’re talking about a maximum attendance of 90 people,” Cr Strickson said.

“A lot of people will walk so we’re talking about maybe 15 cars once every six weeks.

There is an Exclusive Brethren hall just down the road from my place. At lot more than 90 people attend their and even with the car park, the street outside and the pub car park fills up pretty quickly a couple of times a week. And looking at the religious affiliation for Kariong, there are only 23 people that list their affiliation as Brethren. Strickson is being very flexible with the facts.

I’m sure the same consideration would have been given if an Islamic group had proposed a similar venue for Kariong.

But as with Liss, the best stories aren’t all about zombies. Zombies are just the background for ruminations on how human behave (in both awful and noble ways) to each other. Robert Kirkman’s excellent The Walking Dead series is becoming less about surviving zombies and more about surviving other humans.

And hence we arrive at Mira Grant’s (author Seanan McGuire under another name) “Feed“, a story about bloggers in a post-zombie apocalypse world covering a presidential campaign.

In Grant’s world an attempt to cure cancer (which worked) and the common cold (which worked) combined to form an infection called Kellis-Amberlee. In the world of feed, no-one suffers from cancer or the common cold. But everyone is infected to a degree with Kellis-Amberlee. As per usual, death can kick start Kellis-Amberlee into turning you into a zombie but you don’t need to die. Spontaneous “amplification” can turn you into a zombie as can other means but that would spoil some of book’s secrets.

The zombie apocalypse known as The Rising was in 2014. “”Feed takes place 26 years after in the United States, with some areas are largely unaffected (after being cleaned) while other areas are still no go. As everyone has the potential to be a zombie via Kellis-Amberlee, almost every time a person returns to a safe zone they must have a blood test. Green is good. Red means that you are effectively dead. No need to say what happens if your test does return red.

And blogging is more than challenging traditional news as a means of information. Our heroes, Georgia and Shaun Mason have an arsenal of minature cameras, micorhpones, fast connections etc that allow them to go far beyond what blogging is today (though there are certainly bloggers who are pushing the boundaries as envisioned in “Feed”). There is also a hierachry (as is now in a way) with bloggers. Betas tend to work for other sites while Alphas are the ones who can strike out on their one. Grant does really well in setting up this brave new world of blogging one that includes “Newsies”, “Irwins”, “Stewarts” and “Fictionals.”

“Feed” follows Georgia and Shaun Mason, siblings, as they are invited to report on a presidential campaign with their friend and uber geek Buffy Meissonier. And while good old fashioned zombie munching on the living action does happen, the story is more of a political thriller that a horror novel. And a good one. The tension really starts to mount near the end as the devious political machinations are revealed.

Grant has plotted the book well even if the lengthy exposition at times can slow things down. The dialogue is quite snappy (almost Whedonesque at times). I did find the two main characters, Georgie and Shaun a little Mary Sueish. And for someone who has idealised a great future for blogging, what Grant writes (through Georgia Mason) regarding the status of blogging pre-rising is quite dismissive. It almost seems that Grant has a narrow view of blogging as it stands today. Blogging in 2010 is far more than depressed, bored teenagers and vitriolic, conspiracy nuts. Also, no mention of Twitter (or a future alternative) which I found strange.

Those quibbles aside, “Feed” is a great addition to the post zombie apocalypse genre. There are some incredibly powerful scenes and, to be honest, the heart started racing as I read towards the climax on the train home one evening.

“Feed” is book one in the Newsflesh trilogy. I very much look forward the other two volumes.

The first chapter is available at The Feedbook.