American Politicians using 2.0, Australian Politicians still using paper

Politics 2.0 on the ValueWiki Blog only highlights the Luddite qualities of Australian politicians and Australian Government. All the presidential candidates for the USA 2008 Election have their own MySpace pages, some candidates have blogs, social networks and the ability to create your own website about the candidates. The two candidates for Australian Prime Minister are John Howard and Kevin Rudd are a very different story. John Howard has a special website for his seat of Bennelong, which contains an online community survey for Bennelong, email form submission for feedback and an area to enter your snail mail address to receive detailed information on specific issues. Kevin Rudd’s own website URL only redirects back to the ALP website. An email address is not listed on John Howard’s member page for the House of Representatives, although an email address is listed on Kevin Rudd’s member page for the House of Representiatives.

The party websites aren’t much better, the Australian Labour Party website has an email newsletter signup as well as buttons to email the page, print the page, view text-only version and bookmark the page, although they do have a selection of Australian Labour Party RSS feeds, however these are all different formats for a single content feed, which is of Media Releases (how very old media).

However, there are some 2.0 political voices from Australia, they just don’t belong to the politicians. This MySpace page does not belong to Kevin Rudd, but is trying to show support for Kevin Rudd (Kevin Rudd For PM! has 1474 friends). Best name goes to JohnHowardAwesome (John Howard: PM of Australia has 490 friends). There is also a MySpace Group for Australian Politics. That doesn’t include any of the mock pages such as these ones on MySpace for The Ruddmeister (Kevin Rudd) and John Winston Howard (John Howard).

Is there really no more engagement than an RSS feed of Media Releases?

Media, Political and Religious FUD – Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt – Controlling By Fear

Yet another news item about hate speech, the latest one being John Howard and the Catch The Fire ministry. This ministry appears to have a history of spreading the word of intolerance, but as there’s no transcript of John Howard’s speech and the entire article is based on speculation of what he might say or plans to say. This is a pretty shallow and inflammatory article – typical lack of integrity from the MSM (Main Stream Media), yet again. Thank god we have journalists, what would we do without them? Gerard McManus and Michael Harvey you should be ashamed of yourselves. Go home and apologise to your family and friends for inciting racial hatred, inciting fear and publishing material that belongs on Today Tonight or 3AW.

This article is a perfect example of a bigger issue that is not being covered by the MSM, mainly because they are one of the biggest culprits. The issue is FUD. Fear. Uncertainty. Doubt. If you are not familiar with this concept, it’s a marketing strategy, originally used by IBM to cast aspersions on their competitors. However since the terrorist attacks on America, it’s also been increasingly used by the MSM, political parties, governments and churches, as well as big corporates like pharmaceutical companies.

FUD is not always about misinformation, but it is using information as a weapon of fear to manipulate and control people, similar to an armed bank robbery, people who are afraid or uncertain are easier to control.

Everyone needs to be a little more skeptical about the use of FUD by political and religious groups (frankly, most of us in Generation X & Y expect it from corporates, but the use of FUD by politicians has surged since the attacks on World Trade Center). The agenda of any group trying to control people through fear is a dangerous one. Saddam Hussein used this very weapon against his own people, although he didn’t hide it as FUD.

If you find yourself experiencing fear, uncertainty or doubting a previous belief that you had, consider the source of this FUD feeling, and whether that source will receive a personal gain from your fearful, uncertain or doubting state. Today Tonight, 3AW, Beauty & The Beast, there are so many of these shows that drive ratings based on fear, misinformation, divisive statements and repugnant social behaviour. The purpose of fear in evolution is to incite reaction. Media executives have discovered this works really well for ratings, regardless of the impact this has on society. Many of the hosts of these shows do not believe the “controversial” things they say, they’re just whoring for ratings, exploiting the ignorance of their audience for a few bucks in their pocket and five minutes of fame.

Societies living in fear are no longer functioning to their full potential. Fear is crippling to productivity, confidence and mental serenity.

For the next week, count the number of FUD media experiences you have, it may surprise you.