Conservative governments the world over advocate small and decentralised government
at the same time as insisting on their right to legislate against people's private lives. -- Sophie Cunningham

April 7, 2007

Raymond Gill's "arts truism" is true across the board

Every once in awhile I read something that is so bloody true that an involuntary squeak of recognition slips past the gatekeeper, my ego. According to the venerable Wikipedia, "a truism is a claim that is so obvious or self-evident as to be hardly worth mentioning, except as a reminder or as a rhetorical or literary device."

Raymond Gill, the sardonically jaundiced arts editor of The Age, writes an occasional column for that paper called Culture Vulture. He has a knack for cutting through the bullshit to reveal the little white bone of reality that is there once the blood and gristle is removed.

No one will be surprised at the truism he dropped in Right over your head, but how often do we remember it?

… what we choose to like is actually a form of self-marketing.

I agonise watching my daughter at the mercy of her teenage ego in trying on this persona and that, or applying so much mascara that, to me, she looks like a mutant raccoon, but to her she looks cool. Or the "screamo" music she likes because it's guaranteed to offend the adults who are allowing the world she will inherit to wither and die.

But then, who am I to criticise? Are not my Thomas Pynchon books prominently displayed in the bookcase because to like Pynchon is to be cool?

Gill's point is that people hardly understand the things they have adopted as iconic in their lives, but choose them to bestow themselves with substance. Says he:

It is, in fact, liberating to be free of knowledge of script or plot -- it's so much more organic just to let the artistic experience wash over you, which is probably why opera-going, or kabuki, endures.

I've read Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow two and a half times, but please do not ask me to summarise it. Nevertheless, no book -- except for Ulysses -- has come close to it for causing me to shake, rattle and roll with sheer exhilaration at its encyclopaedic audacity. Every time I look at the book -- so prominently displayed -- I have to smile and tip me hat to this hermitic being whose über-existence somehow vindicates the long, sad struggle of the human species.

At least most of us have tried to understand those works of art we own and wish others to judge us by. They have "washed over us" and if we don't exactly understand what in the hell they are about, they have still helped us find meaning in our lives.

Now, as soon as I finish Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly -- bet you didn't know that Dick's middle initial stands for Kool -- I can get on to Pynchon's new book, Against the Day, weighing in at a massive 1085 pages of surreal, post-modern relativism, all of which will doubtless prove that, in your reality of realities, the likes of George W. Bush and John W. Howard do not exist. At worst, the heinous little hologram in which they are contained will resemble some kind of hilarious Satanic cartoon. I can't wait!

-- Olney Garkle

Posted by Olney Garkle at 1:51 PM | Comments (1)

April 5, 2007

Two kinds of people

Person one: Sir Nicholas Stern: "Australia should set a target for reductions by 2050 of at least 60 per cent as part of a rich-world responsibility, it is the right thing to do."

Person two: John Howard: "When it comes to the decisions of the Government, uppermost in our mind will be the national interest, not the views of any one individual, however eminent he may be regarded by some." (Italics mine.)

This is a pretty good example of the two sorts of people who inhabit this planet of woe. In a nutshell, Stern represents that part of humanity who says:

We're all in it together.

Howard represents the rest, who say:

Me and mine and to hell with everybody else.

We all have a little bit of each in our character, but it is usually the one or the other that becomes our dominant characteristic.

Generally speaking, those on the Left believe in the panoramic view that we're all in this mess called life together. Varying degrees of compassion inform this view, allowing us to put our feet in someone else's shoes. The Other, then, is not merely a cipher to be used for profit or military conquest, but a real human being who suffers and rejoices the same as us.

Those on the Right consistently view life from the tribal perspective: My tribe, right or wrong, versus your tribe: perhaps not wrong, but not as right as my tribe. If your tribe agrees with the principles (or lack of them) of my tribe, we can live together relatively peacefully, as long as my tribe can monitor the activities of your tribe. If our tribes are deemed to be highly compatible, you may monitor the activities of my tribe, as well. However, with regard to other tribes, it may be necessary to form an alliance, either economic or military or both. If your tribe refuses, particularly with regards to military action, then my tribe must regard your tribe with suspicion. Inevitably, my tribe will find it necessary to go to war with one or more other tribes. In the event, your tribe will either be with us or against us.

Sound like gobbledygook? That's the language of Right Wing power throughout history.

-- Olney Garkle

Posted by Olney Garkle at 2:44 PM | Comments (3)

April 4, 2007

One species, two branches: human and larval

One thing most of us can agree on is that David Hicks has been detained at Guantanamo Bay all these years at John Howard's pleasure. Not until it suited him -- the election -- did Howard have his chat with Cheney who relayed the request to Susan Crawford who did the deal with Major Mori.

There is no paper trail from Howard to Cheney, and probably none from Cheney to Crawford. It will never be proven. So what else is new?

If you caught Kerry O'Brien's interview with Major Mori last night on The 7:30 Report, where Mori smilingly dodged O'Brien's questions -- clearly to avoid causing Hicks any problems getting back to Australia -- you would have been charmed yet again by Mori's open and honest face. Here is a bloke who is incapable of deceit. Whenever O'Brien appeared to have him cornered, he broke into a beaming smile and said, "That's probably a good question you can ask on 31 March 2008." That's the date David Hicks will finally be free to tell all.

There was a clip during the interview of a speech Mori gave to defenders of David Hicks. Many spontaneously stood up while applauding him.

Contrast the humorous good will of those who defend humanity with the pinch-faced Calvinist scowls of the larval Right. Compare the body language and open expressions of Kevin Rudd to the stumbling, twitching body of John Howard and his mean dark face. The John Howard Party is rife with those who seek to deny, to obfuscate, to smear. The arrogant puffy faces of Alexander Downer and Peter Costello, and the corpse-like pallor of Philip Ruddock are frightening examples. These men are ultimately lifeless; there is no "engine of growth" in their souls. And Peter Costello is so tired and bereft of ideas that all he can do is repeat every so often his silly mantra that women should have more babies.

It's harder to pick who is who in the electorate. I though the old fart who reached for the Herald Sun at the newsagent was going to be a staunch JHP supporter but, while we stood in a queue later on, he nearly spat on the floor at Howard's mention. The garrulous bloke at one of my favourite coffee shops turns out, after all these years, to be a true blue believer in Little Johnny.

Which brings to mind an interesting observation. At the local shopping centre there are a Coles and a Safeway. When asked what they think of John Howard or his policies, the checkout women at Coles invariably dislike him, while the Safeway women turn feral at any suggestion that he is bad for the country. I have no idea why this is so, but it hasn't changed for years.

We human beings are a strange lot. Given the wrong leadership, we can fracture into entirely unlike branches of the same species: those who remain human in spite of everything … and the entry-level larvals who have yet to learn that "there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in their sandboxes".

-- Olney Garkle

Posted by Olney Garkle at 3:47 PM | Comments (0)

April 3, 2007

14 Characteristics of Fascism - Howard has them all

This posting was sent to Bilegrip by "Bruce over at the Garage" as a comment to Howard, Ruddock, Downer: War Criminals, where it can also be found. It should be printed and passed out to everyone on every street in every burb in Australia. -- Olney Garkle

Laurence W. Britt's analysis of the seven major fascist regimes in recent history reveals fourteen common threads that link them in recognisable patterns of national behaviour and abuse of power. These following basic characteristics are strongly prevalent in the Howard Government:

1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism and xenophobia.

2. Disdain for the importance of human rights.

3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause.

4. The supremacy of the military and police.

5. Rampant sexism.

6. A controlled mass media.

7. Obsession with national security.

8. Religion and ruling elite tied together.

9. Power of corporations protected.

10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated.

11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts.

12. Obsession with crime and punishment.

13. Rampant cronyism and corruption.

14. Fraudulent elections, referenda, plebiscites or public opinion polls.

Does any of this ring alarm bells?

Posted by Olney Garkle at 11:17 AM | Comments (0)

April 2, 2007

Howard, Ruddock, Downer: War criminals

spooner070402.jpg
Courtesy John Spooner and The Age

The Australian Criminal Code provides for a sentence to a term of imprisonment for 10 years for breach of the requirement to provide a fair trial. The code has extra-territorial effect so that the offences comprising the war crimes in it apply whether or not the relevant conduct or its result occurs in Australia or elsewhere. Thus the code has application to the conduct of a trial of David Hicks before a military commission held in Guantanamo Bay or anywhere else.

If the opinion is correct about these matters, it follows that the trial of Hicks before the second military commission constitutes a war crime not only under the Geneva Conventions but also under Australian law. The difficulty for the leading members of the Australian Government is that under the Australian Criminal Code to "counsel" or "urge" another party to conduct a trial that does not meet the mandated standards can constitute a war crime. -- Alastair Nicholson, Our own laws condemn Hicks' trial.

So. Crimes against humanity -- refugees behind razor wire for years -- wasn't enough for the Howard government. The trouble is, John Howard will get the same treatment afforded Chile's Pinochet. He'll be protected for the rest of his unnatural life.

There are an incredible number of people out there who couldn't care less about the trashing of the Geneva Convention and Australian laws in the pursuit of David Hicks. To them I say: If you like John Howard, you would have loved Joe Stalin.

And … what we suspected is now being shown to be true. Little Johnny stitched up a deal with Dick Cheney to get Hicks off the election agenda. Here's Michelle Grattan:

What sort of irony is this? For years the Howard Government doesn't seek David Hicks' return, in part because the United States wants to make an example of him via its military commission process. Then it becomes desperate to get him back, and suddenly the Americans don't seem to care any more. John Howard says it's "ridiculous" to suggest the shortness of Hicks' sentence - nine months, finishing late December - has anything to do with the federal election.

He might tell that to the US chief prosecutor for military commissions, Moe Davis, who's shocked at the sentence, part of a deal (not involving the prosecutors) cut between the defence and the military commission's top official, Susan Crawford. Davis says he was looking for a much longer sentence, something involving "two digits".

US reports are noting that Crawford used to be the Defence Department's inspector-general when Dick Cheney was defence secretary. Howard recently lobbied Cheney to get the case finalised.

The Government insists it was hands-off and had nothing to do with the deal. But the deal (which also involves Hicks not pursuing his claims against the Americans that he was tortured) fitted its needs like the proverbial glove. -- Michele Grattan, Hostage to political fortune.

See also:
• Michael Gawenda: Torture is always wrong for the sickening story of how torture became a way of life for the late, great US of A.
• Robert Richter: A trial that was uncomfortably close to Stalinist theatre.

I find that words are failing me here. In the far flung past I have visited many countries in the grip of totalitarian dictators, but never thought I'd be living in one. Typical of John Howard, his is a "relaxed and comfortable" autocracy. We should be thankful for that. If he had an ounce of passion, those terror laws he and Ruddock put into law would, by now, have been enacted Mugabe style.

The despairing truth is that the rescue of Australia is dependent on millions of people who are still turned inward, if not off. Howard is counting on their somnolence to get him across the line. I would invoke the phrase, "God help us," if "God" wasn't on the side of just about every foul deed committed since "His" invention.

-- Olney Garkle

Posted by Olney Garkle at 4:58 PM | Comments (3)

April 1, 2007

We await Australia's first War Crimes Trial

The best thing one can say about the process is that one day there may be a reckoning for this despicable episode, in which Australian ministers, all the way down from the Prime Minister, have been party to the commission of grave crimes under the Australian Criminal Code 1995, divisions 104 (Harming Australians Overseas) and 268D (denying a fair trial), because they have been criminally complicit under section 11.2. -- Robert Richter, QC: A trial that was uncomfortably close to Stalinist theatre

David Hicks is due in Australia by May 29 to serve nine more months. His release date is set for New Years Eve.

John Howard and his blind henchmen think they've heard the last of it. Penelope Debelle (David and Goliath saga far from over)begs to differ:

Hicks' return will cauterise the concern of those who did not like him but objected to anyone being held without trial and subjected to the US military's methods.

Says our PM, the Kaiser of Kirribilli:

He's not a hero in my eyes and he ought not to be a hero in the eyes of any people in the Australian community.

Hicks is no hero, Herr Howard. If he were a hero he would have pleaded "Not guilty." He is, instead, a pawn in the political positioning of the Bush and Howard governments. Richter again:

Hundreds of years of what constituted the rule of law have been jettisoned so that Howard, Ruddock and Downer can pretend that Hicks is off their election agenda. Forget habeas corpus. Forget retrospective legislation. Forget coerced evidence and confessions. Forget commissions in which guilt has been predetermined. Forget prosecutors being judges in their own cause.

It's worth mentioning here that Howard's favourite moniker -- Man of Steel -- translates into Russian as Stalin. Joseph Stalin's real name was Dzhugashvili. He changed it to Stalin early in his infamous career.

To wit, Richter again:

The charade that took place at Guantanamo Bay would have done Stalin's show trials proud. First there was indefinite detention without charge. Then there was the torture, however the Bush lawyers, including his Attorney-General, might choose to describe it. Then there was the extorted confession of guilt.

Whatever Hicks may have done, the theatre of a voluntary plea of guilty when the choice is "rot in hell or say it's true so you can go home" is worthy of The Grand Inquisitor. In Stalin's as well as the German show trials of the 1930s, the essence of the display was the public confession, followed by the sentence. The Iranians and al-Qaeda still practise it, but isn't that why we declared a War on Terror?

Two more comments:

It is a modern cutting out of his tongue." -- Michael Ratner of the US Centre for Constitutional Rights, on the gag order.

• • •

What an amazing coincidence that with an election in Australia by the end of the year he gets nine months, and he is gagged for 12 months from talking about it. -- Lex Lasry, QC.

Especially, as Debelle says, he has previously complained of torture:

Hicks told Judge Ralph Kohlmann he would never allege that he was mistreated while in US custody, yet he has before the British courts now a legal challenge that details alleged US military abuse. In a sworn statement Hicks says he was hit with a rifle, stepped on and sexually abused. "My head, armpits, and crotch were shaved and I was covered with a liquid," he swears in an affidavit.

"Inside the tents there were about 10 US personnel at different stations. Inside the tent, I was photographed naked and a white piece of plastic was forcibly inserted in my rectum for no apparent purpose during this process, and some of the staff joked about this procedure. The US personnel made remarks such as 'extra-ribbed for your pleasure' as the item was stuck in my rectum." Later that night, he was put on a plane to Cuba.

It's too much to hope that a Rudd government (helped along by a Democrat president) will follow Richter's lead and set up a Royal Commission into the criminal misdeeds of the Howard Government. For one thing, the list of crimes is immense; it would take years. We are literally praying for Rudd to win the election, mainly to oust Howard's credibility-free regime. If Rudd wins, it will likely be business as usual, albeit with a tad more social conscience.

Short of a Rudd Government setting up an Australian version of the Nuremberg Trials, is it possible for the legal profession to set up an inquiry of its own? Perhaps without teeth, but still legal and in some way binding? Something must be done to bring this rogue government to justice.

Additional links:
Liz Porter: Law behind closed doors
Tom Hyland: Nowhere man

-- Olney Garkle

Posted by Olney Garkle at 11:58 AM | Comments (2)

March 29, 2007

If Hicks were a Man of Steel like Johnny Chickenhawk…

leak070328.jpg
Courtesy Bill Leak and The Australian

If only David Hicks had read Harold Hark's handy hints for political prisoners, he might have hung on long enough to test the illegal travesty of Gitmo.

We all know why he pleaded guilty. I'd have probably done the same. And Hark? He fled three squares a day for the vagaries of vagabondage in Europe. Rumour has it he's being rendered somewhere in Poland.

Seriously, it would take a real mensch to have looked the kangaroos in their watery eyes and said, "Not Guilty. Go for it."

One such mensch was Alexandros Panagoulis, who suffered your basic inhuman torture at the hands of The Generals during the Greek dictatorship of Papadopoulous. He is immortalised in Oriana Fallaci's book, A Man.

There's a big difference between Hicks and Panagoulis, however. Hicks took up arms with the fascist Taliban in its war with the fascist Bush Administration, while Alekos was an anti-fascist who fought against what they both stand for.

Here are some eloquent letters from The Age on David Hicks:

The Hicks affair is a longstanding disgrace. It will forever remain an irremovable stain on the Howard Government — which, for years, has actively supported and promoted the prolonged solitary confinement, the denial of human and legal rights and the psychological torture of an Australian citizen.

It has supported a regime that has rewritten the law at Guantanamo to remove the basic legal rights and safeguards we all expect. Rights of habeas corpus have been removed. Retrospective laws can make anyone guilty of anything. The Geneva Convention has been eliminated. There is no longer any form of presumption of innocence for suspects — just pre-trial statements of guilt. You can be convicted on secret evidence that you cannot access. The legal system is now "plead guilty now or rot in this hell-hole forever".

However the key issues are not about Hicks. They are about the fundamental changes to the basis of Western law and human rights. With the exception of our inappropriately named Attorney-General, the Australian legal fraternity has universally condemned the process. Regrettably the real terrorist attack on democracy is coming internally from our own Western leaders, not from Islam nor from al-Qaeda.

The disappointment is that a majority of Australians have long been too uninterested or self-absorbed to understand or protest against this erosion of our legal system and our fundamental rights. -- Graeme Scarlett

Continue reading "If Hicks were a Man of Steel like Johnny Chickenhawk…"

Posted by Olney Garkle at 4:44 PM | Comments (2)

March 28, 2007

The corporate mentality and its champion in Howard

In sheer weight of numbers, the benefits that the new industrial relations laws give to business look unclear, and possibly light, compared to the fears that it generates for most employees.

… by July last year, a MYOB small business survey found 40 per cent of small businesses had indicated WorkChoices legislation was unfair to many employees.

Further, only 9 per cent of small businesses planned to make any changes to their approach to employment, pay and conditions as a result of the new legislation.

"It appears from these surprising results that small businesses are well aware of the importance of their employees and the communities they operate in," said MYOB Australia's managing director Tim Reed at the time. "And they don't want to damage those relationships." -- Peter Switzer, To win, Howard must take ire out of IR.

You have to wonder about those percentages now. It may be true that small businesses weren't all that enthusiastic about WorkChoices: your local butcher, the single-operation bakery, the fruiterer, and so forth. But those keen operators with a nose for the franchise must be slavering. Anyone with a nose for business is -- let's face it -- a slaverer when it comes to raking in the dough. Put a normal human being in front of a chance to make gobs and he or she will trample any worker who gets in the way. For, along with a nose for business is the realisation that workers are a dime a dozen.

Hence the success in the last century of the trade unions. But Gordon Gecko has prevailed. It's back to the future for the corporate swill and their faithful minions like John Howard.

When Howard screams and hollers about those awful Unions, he is making it clear to working people that his government will not abide them having any rights, that commercial interests far outweigh the public good. "A casual job is better than no job at all," he says, confirming that he is the master of lowered expectations for the work force. That no one can support a family and a mortgage (or rent) with a casual job goes in one ear and straight out the other. By contrast, for up 'n' comer and big time employers, WorkChoices means the sky is the limit.

Howard is not a nation builder, he is a business builder. He stands for the Corporate Masters and we are meant to be their Servants. That is the natural order of things for his party, peopled almost entirely by private school toffs who were born to rule.

That unions should come to the aid of workers is, for he and his ilk, simply scandalous, un-Australian in fact. WorkChoices represents his most arrogant attack to date on those not in the privileged corporate class.

But what is the corporate mentality? Look no further than lowly toilet paper for a prime example.

We've written before about the toilet paper racket, about how it is constantly being repackaged with smaller sheets in rolls that ever diminish. It's one of those travesties that slips under the radar. No one wants to discuss toilet paper, for God's sake, not even when they have large families.

The TP I've been buying for a couple of years costs $3.09 for six rolls at 270 sheets a roll, with each sheet 11 x 10 cm. Most brands routinely screw punters with a measly 200 sheets or even 160 or less. On top of this, they save a few nano-cents by reducing the sheet to 10.5 by 10 cm.

My particular TP no longer seems to be available, but the remaining items of its scented version now lists a roll at 260 sheets.

That's right, even though they're deleting the line, they've reduced the roll by ten sheets!

This is what the corporate mentality is all about.

Some ambitious MBA decides to win favour with his bosses by offering an infinitesimal profit increase if the number of sheets to a roll of fucking toilet paper is decreased by ten. "Whoopee," cry the bosses, recalibrate the machines!" An entire tube of KY is exhausted in the ensuing orgy, helped along by a slide show of wizened shareholders in lewd poses. Freshly showered, the bosses and their new initiate repair to a fuhst clahss restaurant where they are dutifully served by casual staff, some, students perhaps, bleary-eyed from having to work two jobs to pay their HECS.

This is the pathetic bottom line for business types, whether ready to move on from the local shopping strip or ensconced in corporate offices high above the teeming masses. These are people who, regarding the punters as nothing more than profit fodder (or gun fodder, as the case may be), devote their lives to finding methods of delivering less and less while charging more and more. And the workers on their payrolls are mere ciphers. These are the people who John Howard champions.

The faith of the Howard Government in the stupidity of voters is touching. -- Marcia Turner, letter to The Australian.

The big problem for the Howard Government on IR is that it appears to believe its own spin. John Howard, Peter Costello and Joe Hockey trot out statistics purporting to show that employees are financially better off under Work Choices. That cuts no ice with individuals who draw their conclusions directly from the size of their pay packets. -- Agnes Mack, letter to The Australian.

It's a sad old truism that people don't act until they are personally affected. WorkChoices is starting to bite. Especially with the children (now entering the work force) of parents who still hold real jobs. That is, jobs with leave loading, sick pay and all the rest. The kind of jobs everyone used to have before John Howard's WorkChoices invoked the heyday of the 19th century.

-- Olney Garkle

Posted by Olney Garkle at 11:35 AM | Comments (0)

March 26, 2007

Flat Daddies: is Bush's Umeruhca a cardboard cutout?

(Former staff writer Tomás El ("Pinche") Pendejo's sister-in-law, Chinga Sue Madre, dropped this off yesterday. What could we do but print it? -- Olney Garkle)

flatdaddy.jpg

The following is reprinted from Dani Valent's fyi in the 17 March 2007 edition of Good Weekend. (Copyright, The Age.)

What is a Flat Daddy? It's a life-sized mounted photograph of a deployed US soldier that stays behind in his home to offer comfort and company to his family. Flat Daddies have been around in a small way since at least 2003 but they got a leg-up in 2006 when the Maine National Guard offered them to all families of deployed members. Take-up has been huge. Flat Daddies sit at the dinner table, attend children's sports matches, provide support at the gynaecologist's and visit restaurants (albeit without tipping).

Creepy or cuddly? The foam-backed cut-outs aren't big on hugs, but many mothers say that children with a Flat Daddy feel as if the real guy is part of their lives. It felt silly at first, says Sherri Fish, the wife of a soldier in Iraq, but when her three-year-old son stopped being angry with Daddy for having gone away and started talking to his avatar, she was converted. Sergeant First Class Barbara Claudel from the Maine National Guard explains that many soldiers like the idea of having a doppelgänger on the home front. She encourages families to take their Flat Daddy to parties and weddings, sit him in a chair and take a photo. "Then you send a photo to your soldier and say, 'Sorry you weren't here, but you were really.'"

Are they just for military families? So far, but surely it's just a matter of time before two-dimensional family members replace counterparts absent due to business trips. Be warned, though, military wives have already noted that Flat Daddies do not tidy up, apply Band-Aids or pour drinks. On the upside, they don't leave the toilet seat up, and if they break, they can be fixed with sticky tape.

But wait, there's more. For those families with moms on active duty there are Flat Mommies. O' course, when it comes to the pulchritudinal member(s) of the American Fighting Family, flat just don't get it. Umeruhcans of the male gender want 'em inflated! All they have to do is send away for a Flat Mummy and then peel off the Mummy-sticker and paste it on the inflatable doll. Born-again Christians will want this model, with all its naughty bits removed:

fem3.jpg

But hell, why stop there? Why not send the whole damn family to war? Like so:

chillunmannequins2.jpg

Yep, there's nothing like Umeruhcan ingenuity to keep the home fires a-burnin' while the boys go off to fight the Injuns ... or is it the Commies ... oh, yeah, them Eyerackees. Cause everyone knows Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with Osama bin Laden.

Speaking of ladles, is there anyone left in this consarn family c'n fill this hyar bowl with some o' that thar gruel? Or have I gotta join up to get fed!

-- Chinga Sue Madre

Posted by Olney Garkle at 3:25 PM | Comments (1)

March 25, 2007

Two for a Sunday

First up, readers of The Age letters page will have noted the considered submissions over the years of one, Shirley Scanlon. An arch-conservative-cum-reactionary-cum extra for George Romero's zombie movies, Ms Scanlon's wit and intellectual prowess has ever provided us with howls of laughter. Saturday's tidbit is not one of her best ... or is it? On the subject of Kevin Rudd's bonnet-popping, gingham-unravelling raid on the Future Fund to bring us up to the broadband speeds of Lower Slobovia, Ms Scanlon had this to say:

Rudd is pandering to the trendy at the expense of the welfare of our children and grandchildren.

We pray The Age will one day publish her collected letters.

• • •

leak.070323.jpg
Courtesy Bill Leak and The Australian

Adele Horin (How the PM's attack dog bit his own tail) is a masterful dissection of that cockroach's sweaty anus, Santo Santoro:

When moralisers fall from grace, it is hard to resist the urge to rub the salt in. The Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer, asks us to show compassion to Senator Santo Santoro now that he is undone by his undisclosed share dealings.

But Santoro was not just any minister in the Howard Government. He was the holier-than-thou patriot and right-wing Christian who mercilessly harassed the national broadcaster for its alleged political bias, imagined anti-Christian bias and lack of patriotism. He was the Government's chief attack dog in the quest to shackle and intimidate the ABC. The ABC has come through rather better than Santoro. It was Santoro who didn't do the right and proper thing, not the ABC.

When gap between word and deed is great, as it was with Santoro, it is worth recalling the man on his high horse in the Senate in 2003 berating the ABC for being "sloppy and shoddy".

Just click on the above link to read the whole thing. You won't be sorry.

-- Olney Garkle

Posted by Olney Garkle at 2:49 PM | Comments (1)