My lunch a couple of weeks back with Ian Masters has been much on my mind. The brother of Roy, Chris, Quentin, Sue and Deb and the son of Olga, he does a radio show in LA, syndicated across the US, that looks into politics. I shared a room with him in 1962.
He says when the the planes hit the towers it was not just Bush who dodged out of sight, went into hiding, it was Rumsfeld and Cheney and Condaleezza too. They all of them thought they might be disgraced and shamed and, maybe, imprisoned for failing to protect their fellow citizens from lethal attack by men the FBI knew were taking flying lessons, but not landing lessons. As the officers responsible, they might go to gaol.
So they hid for a while, till their spinmen worked out a plan and told them what to do. This was to turn the whole thing into a religious occasion, with a black female choir singing America, America and Billy Graham praying at Gound Zero, a sacred site thereafter and a national anniversary.
And they got away with it.
It was around then the word ‘politicise’ came into abundant use. We were told that politics had no place in a discussion of al-Qaeda blowing up America. That was too ‘serious’ for politics.
Lately, when the Australian Army burnt a lot of the Blue Mountains down, we were told it shouldn’t be ‘politicised’. An act of national destruction by the nation’s official protectors must not be looked into, we were told, that was ‘politics’, and politics had no place in a question of political failure, of catastrophic political failure, costing billions. No place at all.
One by one, good neutral words are soiled and slimed. Communist. Socialist. Liberal. Left-leaning. Political. One by one these words are targeted and made to look evil by the Right. We are told we can’t say it was wrong to go to Afghanistan, and lose a war there. We are told it was ‘bittersweet’. Wasting seven billion dollars, forty lives, levelling mud villages, killing children, immolating crops, killing goats, and enriching Karzai’s drug-dealing brothers was not wrong, it was ‘bittersweet’.
We should, because of this word ‘politicise’, and its kissing cousin, ‘playing politics’, not call it ‘wrong’ for us to be in Afghanistan, we are told. But it was wrong. And it is not wrong, therefore, surely, to politicise it. In a democracy we elect politicians to sort out things. It is not wrong for them to do their job. And to call it ‘playing politics’ is to attack democracy itself. We shouldn’t do that.
We shouldn’t say some things are ‘above politics’. Nothing is. It was politics that got us into World War One, and out of it. It was politics that got us to the Moon. It was politics that funded penicillin, and the saving of a billion lives. It was politics that obliterated Hiroshima.
‘Politics’ is not a separate thing from life, it is life itself, life in action, discussion, legislation, ratiinal debate. It is taking responsibility for how a nation behaves. To demean it as Abbott does, and Murdoch does, is a form of treason. And in wartime they would go to gaol for it, And this was wartime until Monday.
Confucius said the first duty of government was to ‘rectify the language’. Orwell explored this in Nineteen Eighty-four. Fox News rectifies the language every day, as when they turned ‘suicide bombers’ into ‘homicide bombers’.
And so it was that 9/11 became not an avoidable military defeat with investigation, impeachment, court martial and public trial of Condaleezza in its wake, it became a religious occasion, celebrated yearly, like Thanksgiving.
And so will these bushfires too, ‘depoliticised’ into a welter of national pride and hymn-singing grief, when major generals should be court-martialled for it, and the Army fined a billion dollars. There should be a Senate inquiry into it, and army generals publicly stripped of their medals before the Cenotaph and sent to gaol for ‘accidental terrorism’ and schoolkids publicly shamed as ‘deliberate terrorists, however ignorant’, the product of a bad bringing up, and put in gaol for a couple of years.
We would save a lot of property if we ‘politicised’ bushfires, and linked them to global warming. We would save lives, and lessen trauma like my children’s when our house burned down.
Let’s hear it for ‘politicisation’. Of everything.
That way democracy lies.
And the pursuit, old friend, of happiness.
Name:
…and we talk about ‘people smugglers’ and about winning a ‘war’ against them, but we cleverly forget that this is not about smugglers at all but about desperate people looking for a better life.
It’s all because we don’t want look the truth in eye and admit: we don’t want ‘them’ here…
The latest one from Abbott - we have ‘closed the floodgates’on asylum seeker arrivals.
Why is Labor still giving them a free ride with their rhetoric and lies. At least point out that our asylum seekers are nothing (per capita)compared to European countries.
Labor needs to attack through social media relentlessly…
Labor is too nice, too civil, and that irritates me to no end. That’s why I was an avid Albanese supporter, I thought he would be a better match for the Liberal bully boys…
I just saw snippets of the up and coming ABC interviews, O’Brian interviewing Keating…
They don’t make Leaders like Keating anymore
Regrettably, Albo is still a pussycat compared to Keating.
But I don’t think we need to out-mongrel Abbott. And we certainly should not want to.
Before the renewal of a new Australia we must atone, repent, show genuine contrition.
I have been found guilty of slighting Australia in conjunction and aid from Norway, Sweden and The Netherlands. I am guilty as charged but how to apologize? Let me try.
Do I go out and in deep sun-drenched suburbia, embrace a sheet of zinc alum and ask for forgiveness. I am so sorry colour-bond, I know you mean well and you never rust either. How could I have been so cruel? You give generously to all within your sun-locked boundaries and no nasty neighbour can ever be detected. No blade of grass can ever abuse you.
Next is the pebble-creted driveway so sweetly curved upwards to the triple remote garage. So sorry; please allow me to prostrate myself humbly for having slighted you so badly. I will never ever do it again. Here, allow me to varnish you and let your pebbles shine for ever brightly. You have given so much welcoming and loving traction to the Michelin and Kuma tyres. I am so sorry.
Oh, the horror of the hurt I have knowingly inflicted on all those kind beds of nodding petunias, those havens of suburban peace and tranquillity, harbouring and giving respite to the tortured souls of the Westfield shopping malls with local pubs and clubs. How can I make up? Would you like some water, some kind Leghorn manure to boost your cheerful growth? I am sorry.
The leaf blower. I am so sorry. How can I make up for having accused you of noise and mayhem while all you did was blow away leaves onto your preying neighbours property or into the kerbs of endless avenues. Allow me to take you out for dinner and lubricate your twin carby cylinder. Anoint your inlet suction and empty the bag. Please, let me.
As for the crispy manicured lawn. The worst of all my misdemeanours. Let me sink on my knees and prise out all those lugubrious weeds with sinister intent on multiplying themselves during the dark of the night. Here let me mow you with my Victa and I’ll rake you lovingly in neat heaps, ready for the mulcher who I have never abused. I always held the mulcher in high esteem. I don’t know why.
Last but not least, the Venetian blind. Let me dust you. Please accept all my Christmas cards which I will stick through your slatted shiny apertures. If you like I can also give you a nice trade in for the vertical ones but how to attach the cards. I can also perhaps show contrition by getting boxes of twinkling lights to adorn the roof and garage door right up to the fence and along the lawns.
I won’t do it again.
Loved the leaf blower paragraph! When I arrived here, leaf blowers weren’t invented. It was a job for the garden hose. I guess brooms weren’t invented either. Just wash those leaves down the driveway. Who cares if it is the driest country on Earth. “She’ll be right mate”. I didn’t see petunias either. Boulders and stag horns were all the rage. -Jindalee, Brisbane, 1983.
Apology accepted. Concrete boots downgraded to rein with lead attachments.javascript:grin(‘:wink:’)
resin
what?
Hi Erika, yes, resin, probably with a fibreglass structure. Gerard and I indulge in this sort of humour.
In Australia its laugh or die. It started in Port Arthur I believe…
Yes, those were the days my friend.
hey, GW, anger becomes you.
sheesh: zincalum; BLOODY manicured green lawns, symbol of all that is banal, wasteful, lifeless and timewasting beneath the visiting moon; waterboarding for leaf-blowers
GO, that is
manicured green lawns addendum: “and fundamentally unAustralian at every level”
venetian blinds are so cold, hard, metallic, sharp, very unhomelike, very unAustralian - surely?!
(very manufactured-in-massive-factories by big enterpirses with lots of marketing clout)
Yes, that’s true, but in my haste to criticise I upset many people. I spent many valuable teen years peering behind those venetians hoping for a flicker of life. I was happy to sometimes spot my neighbour walking past from work. I did not need much but in the end I was found to be wanting and the lonely suburb of my parents spew me out.
It just did not nourish me enough. It was all hopeless.
However, I have made amends. Life is so short. I apologised profusely for my sins. It is not easy to embrace zinc alume and say ‘sorry’, nor to prostrate oneself on pebble crete with genuine contrition.
I was just hoping that someone somewhere might wonder why our youth suicide rates are amongst some of the highest in the world or why this desperate binge drinking, the high anti- depressant usage could perhaps be linked or have something to do with how we live such isolated lives.
“might wonder why our youth suicide rates are amongst some of the highest in the world or why this desperate binge drinking, the high anti- depressant usage”
Why would we wonder about that? These are all legal activities which keep thousands of people in work and pay high dividends, so neither left nor right could possibly have a problem
Yes, let’s politicise bush fires.
Let’s begin by having more Firefighting aircraft and fewer Strike fighter aircraft. More water tankers and fewer tanks. More firefighters - and fewer politicians.
That’s the way to democracy and a better society.
Confucius and “Rectification of Names” - Confucius called for things, including people, to be named according to what they were truly meant to be, and not what they pretended to be. Thus, Confucius say, “Australia has only politicians and not leaders”. Discuss.
Why not get the aborigines who are interested to run our Environmental Department, organize the burns, protect the waterways and native creatures and plants. They are best for the job, with their long expertise.
Us whities are plainly hopeless. We build gnashing electicity wire on poles which spark the fires, and we dont even want to see that this happens…still!
The army starts the biggest fire and they are let off the hook. Just demolishing up a few bombs…duh!!
There is definitely a big message in all this. Men have lost the plot!
In NZ the Maori people do this. The Kiwis worked it out.
I think that deep in the psyche of the settler generations is the anxiety of the holder of stolen property - “It wasnt mine - I stole it - when will I have to give it back - what will I do then”
As soon as the doctrine of “terra nullius” was exposed as a myth, this anxiety deepened.
As we slowly realised that the original owners were not going to die out, we realised we had witnesses to our theft.
We bury this anxiety under an increasing tower of mattresses stuffed with twisted lies, but our sleep is still troubled, because the little pea of truth is still under the first mattress we threw over it.
…yes, Dali, that’s the hard bit, looking at that little hard pea-eye and admitting the truth….more thick mattresses needed…
good post Dali, well put.
Yes! What rich grist a Sydneysider Freud would have had
Our PM does not believe in Climate Change, and brushes it off by mumbling something about Oz weather always having been fickle, ya know; four seasons in one day, or something folksy like that…
Janet Reno/David Koresh/Waco. They ran over those kids with a bloody tank, they were pulped, mutilated beyond recognition, after dying from smoke inhalation. Koresh is one thing, but the kids?
chris, I tried to reply to some of your posts yesterday, you must know it was not rudeness from my side, they disappeared before reaching you…
It seems a bit better today, at least my ‘testings’ appear here..
Yes Helvi, its very capricious. Three post for one to get through.j
I don’t think Malcolm can get through at all. He’s welcome to email me through my website.
Good idea, chris, I have been missing Malcolm K.
good idea chris, I have missed Malcolm K.
Wow! Amanda Vanstone is to be paid $1500 per day to be on the team hand-picked by Abbott to rein in spending. She’s one of five, so that’s $7500 a day.
Wow Amanda, that’s a lot of crates of wine. Still, you’re a good girl, eh?
Gerard O, as one who has grown up in the “’burbs”, your description of it is another example of the clichéd shorthand vilification that is used to simultaneously condemn not only urban sprawl and the inherent evil the suburbs embody, but also condemn the people who live there as a vacuous, unaware, unintelligent, unfeeling, boastful lot worthy of nothing but scorn.
.
You seem to condemn the inhabitants for wide ranging crimes from being rednecks, to chiding them for the values of their morality and their simultaneous lack of values in regards to their perceived amorality not to mention, their choice of where they/we live automatically sentencing them to charges of immorality for crimes against the environment and worse of all “bad taste”.
The venetian blind, the leaf blower, the pebblecrete driveway, yes well that sums up Australian Suburbia in all of its complexity, variation, demographic diversity, its past, its history, its aspirations, its dreams and nightmares, its political conscience, its religious fervour or lack thereof, in short its humanity and all that implies.
The burbs are where is at, where the battle is to be won or lost and we ignore them at our own peril. It is a conceit of the highest order to believe the inner suburbs of Australian cities reflect in any way shape or form the urban environments of the great cities of Europe, their folk, history or background because the inner suburbs of Australian cities are really still just suburbs closer to the city and not much else. In fact the gentrification of the inner suburbs, the contagious construction of high rise apartment buildings and the surrounding coffee lead economy and not much else that it fertilizes is a dead end in my opinion and should be the real target of your dislike for the empty valueless pretend sophistication it purports to be.
There is much wrong with the suburbs, the fact that there is much wrong indicates the level of complexity of issues and the diversity of people it houses that makes your simple evaluation ridiculous and hackneyed. Whether you like it or not, whether by choice or not, the majority of people living in Australia live in the suburbs.
Great post.
Geez mate. I apologized. Did you expect a self-disembowelment? It is a parody. In comedy there is no bad or good taste.
Give me a list of ‘safe’ subjects.
I wrote similar stuff about the Dutch when living there.
I read it more as hamfisted sarcasm than parody Gerard.
Write a defense of suburbia, see how you go with that. Extol its virtues.
C’mon Gerard. We’re waiting…
I am busy embracing a high-rise and extolling the virtues of short black.
I’ll leave it to Robin Boyd; He is so much better qualified in the practicalities of the truth.
Fifty years after its first publication, Robin Boyd’s bestselling The Australian Ugliness remains the definitive statement on how we live and think in the environments we create for ourselves. In it Boyd railed against Australia’s promotion of ornament, decorative approach to design and slavish imitation of all things American.
Boyd was a fierce critic, and an advocate of good design. He understood the significance of the connection between people and their dwellings, and argued passionately for a national architecture forged from a genuine Australian identity. His concerns are as important now, in an era of sustainability, suburban sprawl and inner-city redevelopment, as they were half a century ago.
Caustic and brilliant, The Australian Ugliness is a masterpiece that enables us to see our surroundings with fresh eyes. This handsome edition is complemented by Robin Boyd’s original sketches for the book and a new afterword by major contemporary architects.
‘Robin Boyd’s book clarified for all of us that Australian ugliness—how we would bludgeon the land into fertility, cut forests so that power lines could go through, so that cars could take precedence over everything…Conservatism reigned supreme; it had to be like that regardless of whether it was logical, whether it was appropriate, whether it responded to climatic variations…The buildings were the same from Melbourne to Darwin, and they still are the same.’ Glenn Murcutt
I often remember the wise words of Gibby Hayes from the Butthole Surfers:
“Those fuckin Dutch. They’ll piss you off eventually.”
Last time I checked GO’s passport it was Australian, so for sure is Glenn Murcutt’s.
I don’t think Robin Boyd was Dutch, or Barry Humphries for that matter
I have been told that GO came here when he was fifteen, and lived for too many years in Western suburbs of Sydney. Before that in a hot Nissan hut in Scheyville migrant camp…weren’t they called Reffoes in those days, at least he was never called illegal.
Just remember allthumbs that Australia, geographically, is a very very small country with a massive population (bigger than India) and the developers don’t have a lot of money, or the councillors who are their ‘friends’.
And fast trains that could transport anyone anywhere, well they proliferate don’t they.
You’re talking out your arse mate.
I’m not sure I understand what you are talking about Chris, that went right by me like a fast train.
The corralling of people - for what purpose? It should be mandatory that every young family gets an acre minimum. This is not Lichtenstein.
You really should dilute the linseed oil and turps, open the windows of your studio.
The hairy end of the brush is what you predominately should use on the canvas, I point that out because you obviously often grab hold of the wrong end of the stick.
Although my ability at parody is clarly not as good as Gerard’s.
Is that your version of a very fast train?
You know perfectly well what I’m saying.
Gerard is a humanist, he is attacking the prison walls because the prisoners are going mad.
Hadn’t you noticed.
I really did not know what you were saying, the talking out my arse quip put it further from my understanding.
Perhaps there is a fine line between being a humanist and being patronizing.
Just for my own clarification would that mandate extend to every young family in China or India for instance, or only where space allows?
Or is it an Australia only mandate?
Can that acre be any where?
When you fly over the earth you will notice there is room-a-plenty, I dare say, given its tiny population, Lichtenstein also.
The average punter, world wide, is pretty powerless, unless he or she forms a revolution and rises up against that oppression. Can this happen anymore - no it cannot. The age of surveillance is upon us and they shoot or jail anyone who holds a contrary view.
The name of the game is to squeeze as many people onto the smallest possible amount of land, irrespective of the social consequences - the ghettos in the US being a prime example.
And who are they - the oppressors? ‘They’ are people without souls, without a heart between them.
Let me ask you, just for clarification, do you support your local zoo?
Don’t worry Gerard. I got the joke. Unless it’s Kath and Kim, The Castle, or Muriel’s Wedding, it may go over the head of some.
Allthumbs knows that all dog trainers keep their dogs on a short leash.
you’re a cynical prick.
No I’m not a cynic. One should be accountable for one’s actions. Allthumbs just likes to keep it real. Like me.
Let’s take your painting analogy into politics because you assume you know art.
Lets imagine Prime Minister were painters.
Keating was a big picture canvas painter in the style of Jacques-Louis David. He used broad strokes but with controlled finesse, a Wagnerian history painter with lots of chiaroscuro and by and large did a pretty good job at selling his paintings. Eventually he went out of fashion for…
Howard who was the world’s greatest miniaturist. Very popular artist. Great attention to detail. He could paint the individual hairs on a gnat’s bum but his eyesight gradually gave out so he went out of fashion for…
Rudd who was a mad 50′s abstract expressionist who sprayed the walls of the shop with expensive paints and damaged the floor and ceiling and ultimately got evicted…he claims he’s never been understood, and probably never will…
Gillard was a nude performance artist who never quite connected with her public. She got booed at lot and eventually shunned performing in the western suburbs. She ultimately blamed her audience as miserable misogynists. She is writing a book about her art.
Tony Abbott. To early to tell. Fond of Russian Icons and illuminated manuscripts and hair shirts. Perhaps a wood carver like Albrecht Dürer…
His portraits of rabbits are very good.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Durer_Young_Hare.jpg
and your point is?
That is very funny Frank,that is very funny.
Yeah, about as funny as Sly Stallone being the equal of Jackson Pollock.
The real offense I took from that review was the unfairness to Soutine.
It’s funny to hear politicians accusing other politicians of ‘politicising’ or ‘playing politics’.
It reminds me of a couple of blokes in the local dementia ward, overheard by a friend, observing a third resident who used to drum incessantly on tables or anywhere.
One said with a concerned expression “I wonder what’s wrong with him?” The other replied “I don’t know, but I think he might have dementia.”
Sorry, Bob, please don’t make sport and art political. Not everything, and not everyone, should be political, especially if they don’t want to be.
Anyway, why are you so fond of your puppets? Is it because they have the best lines?
It has been a long time since I read Boyd’s book, the front cover of my edition of a second hand paperback had the ugly street scape of a strip shopping centre, the same strip shopping centres we lament the demise of in favour or “THE MALL”, nostalgia is a motherfucker, the way it distorts one’s memory of the past. Bring back the strip shopping centre, the local traders where the butcher knew your name and where you’d walk to, to get your milk and bread and newspaper, yes the strip shopping centre, each and every one worth a world heritage listing.
The featurism of the miners cottages of Richmond, Collingwood, Moonee Ponds, their wrought iron railings and porch details so lusted after by the young and affluent, renovated to within an inch of its life within in the new modern austerity but outside the ghosts of the past feel at home passing as they do the same exteriors. Rip ‘em down I say and give me the clean geometric lines of the bunker, the façade of the Palast of the Republic but with bedrooms and ensuites.
Even Barry Humphries is trying to save our suburbs, well his suburb, Camberwell, the leafy suburb, the very model of featurism that Boyd railed against, yes Humphries wants to preserve what was and stop what should be or could be or might be and save the green leafy streets and manicured lawns and clinker brick, bay windowed, leadlighted feature windows, the mock tudor, the grand federation finials upon the roofs of Camberwellian middle class residences with their Oaks and Elms and Silver Birch treed laden streets. Barry wants to stop the urgent necessary higher density development that will help stem urban sprawl and put the accoutrements of living closer to the city and all of the cultural embellishments that the City offers to the nearer dwellers to more residents and help improve their characters closer to their doorstep. Oh Barry how can you be so cruel and place further stress upon us Neanderthals is the outer burbs, prick us do we not bleed……….?
Pull them down I say raze Camberwell to the ground and replace it with the sleek featureless, smooth walled modernity of McMansions, sustainable gardened, natives only, small water thirsty lawns reduced in size to make way for the courtyard with the pit fire and the indoor/outdoor living space, but take careful note of the overshadowing requirements and preserve the illusion of being separate but together.
“The age of surveillance is upon us and they shoot or jail anyone who holds a contrary view.”
Not quite there yet Chris, but I get the gist of what you are saying. Perhaps that is the purpose of the NSA phone surveillance list, and just like Santa they’re checking it twice.
I understood Gerard’s post to be leveling that charge of the heartless and soulless at the “prisoners” themselves. I thought that a conceit, empty and unfounded, patronizing,hackneyed and trite and the brand name appellations a tell tale of exactly how patronizing it was.
I used to believe in the “they” now I believe in the “we”.
One thing Chris, and it is the gap between my intent in what I write and how it eventually comes out where the shortfall happens, my main interest is not in the pro’s and con’s of urban development or likewise architecture, it is in the throwaway summation of identifying and lampooning a “they” and tarring them with a broad brush and thinking it clever insightful social comment, with the added indignity of thinking oneself superior while doing so.
I love the zoo but I prefer the circus.
Lampooning? I thought it common knowledge I lived for years in the suburbs and bitumen Utopia. Give us a break. You try and go out and embrace a sheet of colour-bond fencing. I did it on the corner of Rozella Circuit and McGirr Street at Revesby. People thought I was mad and took a wide bend around me… avoided eye contact. The zinc alum sheet accepted my apology with grace and even asked me to the local for a schooner. The publican was kind and allowed the colour-bond fence to sit next me. That is real mateship.
It wasn’t ‘me’ and ‘they’ at all. It was total acceptance.
I think the ‘lady doth speaketh too much’in your case.
Too much all allthumbs not enough ‘allthere’.
Have you read Gerard’s “Frank’s Story?
In the Adelaide zoo at the moment they are flat out making ice cubes to keep the polar beers cool in their little bath. So ‘we’ can look at them in 45 degree heat and getting hotter.
Shove your fucking zoo dick head.
bears.
chris,
He only reads his own stuff that is in praise of him. All must bow before him, swear obeisance and accept everything passively and unquestioning.
I am afraid the Greek yoghurt has soured.
Zoo’s Victoria has a breeding program to help prevent the extinction of endangered species.
Why are they endangered? No animal should be locked up for our entertainment.
I’ve worked in a zoo and what I saw shocked me. Do you believe in caged birds too btw?
As I understand it the breeding program is to bolster the chances of endangered species still in the wild. Such as helping the Tasmanian Devil.
I had a budgerigar as a kid and two gold fish, and a succession of dogs at different times of my life.
Do I believe in caged birds? Do you mean in their existence, like the tooth fairy, or in the sense of caging birds generally?
The less cruelty to animals the better is my default position.
Did yo ever see the clip of “Christian, The Lion Reunion?” If not it’s worth googling. It speaks for itself. And if you don’t shed a tear at the end you’re a tougher cookie than me Gunga Din.
The mentality of locking up animals is the same mentality which endangers them.
Unfortunately, zoos are increasingly going to be necessary to save at least tiny remnants of many species (while thousands are disappearing forever). Our koala is not as vulnerable as polar bears, but it is at great risk from two sides: 1 immediate death from heat waves, 2 starvation as the chemical content of gum leaves changes at higher CO2 levels
“My view of koalas is that the strong connection between food quality and demography means that they are particularly vulnerable to climate change.
Elevated atmospheric CO2 reduces the amount of protein available from Eucalyptus leaves for animals. This Eucalyptus-marsupial system is one of the very
few examples in which the direct effects of CO2 can be linked to populations of wild mammals.” - William Foley, University of Sydney
http://cmsdata.iucn.org/downloads/fact_sheet_red_list_koala_v2.pdf
“One quarter of the koalas we studied perished in a heatwave in 2009″
Dr Mathew Crowther, University of Sydney
http://sydney.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=12441
Unfortunately, zoos are increasingly going to be necessary to save at least tiny remnants of many species (while thousands are disappearing forever). Our koala is not as vulnerable as polar bears, but it is at great risk from two sides: 1 immediate death from heat waves, 2 starvation as the chemical content of gum leaves changes at higher CO2 levels
“My view of koalas is that the strong connection between food quality and demography means that they are particularly vulnerable to climate change.
Elevated atmospheric CO2 reduces the amount of protein available from Eucalyptus leaves for animals. This Eucalyptus-marsupial system is one of the very
few examples in which the direct effects of CO2 can be linked to populations of wild mammals.” - William Foley, University of Sydney
http://cmsdata.iucn.org/downloads/fact_sheet_red_list_koala_v2.pdf
“One quarter of the koalas we studied perished in a heatwave in 2009″
Dr Mathew Crowther, University of Sydney
://sydney.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=12441
Communism is a dirty word for the same reason that its cousin nazism is a dirty word. The actions of its adherents in murdering milions and imprisoning and mpoverishing millions more is why communism is a dirty word. Blame the communists not the democrats who fought communism.
how ‘clean’ are:
capitalism
colonialism
imperialism
?
how ‘clean’ were the royal inbred families of europe, whose centuries long inhumanity led to the creation of a force to remove them.
How ‘clean’ is christianity (or other religions one could name, but let’s stick with the biggest killer)
Marx and Jesus both had very useful things to say; sadly few of Jesus’ words have come down to us unwarped by his succesors, but Marx’s wisdom, especially his visionary foretelling of the thoroughgoing destructiveness of capitalism, are still available
Move beyond the labels and the propaganda campaigns, especially those promoted by the rich and their mouthpieces
‘Politics is life’is a very correct and accurate statement, in a sense all art is political it says things about social, political, economic and personal structures; all science is political from the right trying to lie and cover up everything from evolution to global warming. The Right politicize everything but want to make it appear that they don’t; that their politics is “class free” that its about individuals when their entire set of ideologies from Friedman, to Rand, to Von Hayek, to corporate imperialism and militarism is a blatant and explicit set of ideas to hold and maintain political and economic power. The Republicans, the tea party, the Australian Liberal party are essentially neo-fascists parties ie fascists in suits instead of military uniforms.
You only need to look at Campbell Newman to see Benito Mussolini.
I don’t know what I’m looking at with Abbott; something on the bottom of my shoe perhaps.
http://www.independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/what-if-tony-abbott-is-just-an-idiot,6034
The French media has declared, soon after Abbott was elected:
‘Sexiste et beauf : voici Tony Abbott, nouveau premier ministre australien’
Got to love the French!
The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet has decided to keep secret its first briefing for the Prime Minister, marking a shift from 2010, when the Department published a redacted version of the briefing it prepared for Julia Gillard.
The decision to block access to the briefing, follows decisions by Treasury and the Attorney-General’s department – both of which published elements of their 2010 briefs – to refuse Freedom of Information requests for the briefs they prepared for their new political masters.
Add this to the now regular ‘refusal to answer, decline to comment’ form of accountability, selective briefing and dining with co-opted journalists, and the Credlin Kremlin ukase on information control, it is beginning to look like a right wing soviet state wedded to secrecy.
Discuss at your peril.
Soon, our Coalition Government (in its wisdom) will put a ban on Climate Change discussions and will just give a weekly synopsis on the latest weddings and funerals only.
The Bureau of Meteorology will only be allowed giving benign weather patterns. Hurricane storms will be called ‘air flows’ floods are ‘cups of tea’ and melting glaciers ‘wedding cakes.’
Acidification of oceans will be called ‘cycling events’ or sometimes ‘flat-head fillets’.
javascript:grin(‘:lol:’)
dats so as not ta cuase panik becorse da nashen is in such a perilus state after you Laber rowdents recked it
Look in after 3 weeks or so and what do I see? Another revelation. The never-heard-of Ian Masters would be suitable poster here (of the way-way-out variety that is) IF he really said that guff about all the hidden heavies on 911.
What rot, child-like to even consider it when it is so laughable. I could take it as just more satire from the host – mere food fir the gullible chooks who feed here, perhaps.
Where Bush was is well known to any primary schoolchildren who can search the internet. CVheney was where he was supposed to be while a President was in the air on Air Force One at a time of crisis – the command post underground set up for that purpose. I don’t suppose any of the conspiracy posters here would have read anything of the 911 Commission report (or read anything at all about the facts), but if they did they would see that great attention was given to the minute by minute command decisions made by Cheney about all manner of things to do with immediate responses, including his orders to shot down certain incoming terrorists if necessary.
As for Rumsfeld, well he was easily found – even for this Ian Masters character (what a show HE must have in the US! What an audience!) – IN THE PENTAGON. He hung around helping out in public view from then on and was shown in US TV doing so. I saw it myself, watching live as I was from 10.50pm the night before (when the first plane crashed into Tower 1 until after 4.30am the next day.
What a post to read first this was!!!!
Let’s “politicise” the “class war”, that way the poor may stop being slaughtered like sheep
This is something you wouldn’t see in the mainstream media very often before the Guardian came:
[The foul disgrace to humanity Newman] “made his comments in an interview with The Australian, a conservative campaigning newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch, and well known as a biased promoter of climate change denialist views and news articles.”
(The first few words have not yet appeared in the Grauniad)