spinbadz own

"A worker cleans spare parts at an automobile spare parts recycling shop in Mumbai April 11, 2007. Indian workers earn between 150 Rupees and 200 Rupees (around $3 to $5) a day working in the city. (INDIA)"

Reuters churns out some really attractive photos these days.

In the age of YouTube, the Internet, mobile phone-cameras and high resolution screens coffee table book quality pic collections can be compiled every single day by a news/opinion organisation with digital cameras everywhere. And you and I can browse and enjoy them for free.

Of course, in the case of Reuters, their management team does not seem to be tremendously concerned with checking veracity, or with providing context.

Nor do they seem to be reticent in swinging their own specious opinions around at every given opportunity.

So there is no surprise that the lead group of photos in many of their slideshows pander to certain themes. Particularly the theme of showing some evil Israeli action vis-a-vis some poor innocent Palestinian, like the one showing an Israeli dog "attacking" a Palestinian (old) lady (in the link above at the time of writing).

Perhaps credibility must be sacrificed for the sake of instant art and dedicated picto-bombast. Reuters seems to be populated with a large number of poorly paid, semi-educated and nameless drones who live in a world where "terrorism" only exists inside quotation marks and is otherwise a legitimate response to Israeli, US and capitalist oppression.

Fine and sometimes meaningful pictures are, however, sometimes transmitted from this high-sense world, particularly where a pet drone theme is not involved.

Like the picture at top of an Indian automobile worker's hand, with its telling caption: Five bucks a day. Imagine that.

Here in Australia, much of the political talk seems to be focused on the evils of the Howard government's recent "Workchoices" legislation, which sought to curtail or reverse a number of luxuries previously enjoyed by Australian workers at the expense of their employers. Things like: making it barely possible, rather than virtually impossible, to fire an employee for an offence short of murder, arson or provable embezzlement.

Things like: removing established minimum wage "awards", which guaranteed an Australian worker of equivalent skill a minimum of about twenty times the wage of the Indian workers alluded to in the photo.

PM Howard and Treasurer Costello have busily stumped the aims of "Workchoices". The intent is to make Australian businesses more internationally competitive. Business success and growth will translate into higher living standards and more jobs, they say.

Yet noone seems to be listening. Like the Reuters drones globally, the Australian trade union infrastructure is locally ubiquitous. Its paradigm (workers=good / bosses=bad; workers=good / profit=bad) seems to have the country in thrall:

- Even as jobs and entire Australian enterprises drift away to Asia and the US.
- Even as Australian households are assailed daily by sales calls from "Australian" business operations in Mumbai.
- Even with awareness of the burning example of Japan's success. Most know full well that modern Japan was born in the stigma of both post-WW2 poverty and "Made in Japan" branding. We have seen Japan mature, in the wake of enterprise leadership, into the technology and wage behemoth of today.
- And even with satellite, cable, Internet and international travel enabling many Australians to be aware, in real-time, of both:

a) the many products, ideas, companies and opportunities that simply don't filter Down Under, due to the crippling costs of shipping to or producing in what is in any case a small and distant market, and
b) the exorbitant relative cost of many products that do make it here.

Yet noone seems to be listening to Howard or Costello:

'Well, Australia's just not good at manufacturing, never has been'

you hear the detractors say, and it's amazing how many people take that as a given, without thinking about the simply deflected enormity involved: not good ... at manufacturing.

Along came Howard and Costello, trying to do something about that. "Workchoices" was meant to prompt the tiniest, tiniest step along the path to enterprise reform. The response has been as predictable as it is appalling. From out of the parallel universe the critics poured, in their thousands onto the streets. Screaming in protest against "Workchoices".

Then in the parallel, parallel universe of medialand, the Reuters-esque denizens dutifully exaggerated those protest figures: tens of thousands were there, the headlines screamed, not hundreds, not thousands. Polls were headlined too. These of course showed how unpopular Howard and Costello are - mainly because of Workchoices, so the pollsters said. Then Howard's party's NSW state branch lost an election, with the victorious opponents highlighting "Workchoices" as a prime election issue.

Which it no doubt was, the perception becoming the reality, as can happen under the influence of a misleading picture.

And which, for myself, begs several questions: Will reality come crashing down on Australian heads one day? If so when and how, and how badly?

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Meanwhile US Republican presidential candidate John McCain has confronted "Warchoices" with Reagan-like determination. On (US) 60 Minutes recently, he was asked why he refuses to repudiate the Iraq campaign, even when it is so unpopular, and even when such a stand could kill his 2008 election chances:

"I disagree with what the majority of the American people want. I still believe the majority of the American people, when asked, say if you can show them a path to success . . . then they'll support it."

The Senator replied that he'd "rather lose a campaign than lose a war."

Mr. McCain is making clear he understands that leadership is often by nature unpopular. He has been equally clear about the consequences of U.S. withdrawal from Iraq--"chaos" and "genocide" were among the scenarios he painted...