Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

The Stanhope government seems to think that their tenure and so called experience are the factors that will work in their favor during this campaign. But our shared experience of a lifetime of community values tells us otherwise for their tenure has been an abject disaster.

If carbon capture and storage is capable of any significant dampening effect on global warming, then the CO2 involved will inevitably be a resource of massive importance for the future inhabitants of the Earth. That in short, is the other side of the CO2 coin.

The ostensible argument for power privatisation is that NSW needs the money for schools, hospitals and other expenditure. The reality is that sale of capital is touted as the way to finance ongoing expenditure, analogous to the classic case of the farmer who sells off a bit of the farm each year to keep the family clothed and food on the table.

Norman Mailer once wrote: “My long experience with human nature … suggests that it is possible that fascism, not democracy, is the natural state.” Mailer was a novelist, and his business was being provocative. I found his article … to be food for considerable worthwhile thought. After the thinking, I decided he was wrong.

If any continuous theme runs through [Paul Keating's] career, it is power: the acquisition of it, the exercise of it, the company of it, being on the side of it, loss of it, and now reminiscence of it. I cannot put it more appropriately, even though my grandmother once told me never to use language: power has been to Keating as shit to a blowfly.

Kingston has an excellent nose for a story and a profound sense of the historical context and importance of each. Future historians of this period may disagree with her, but they won’t be able to ignore her. As William Randolph Hearst said of the craft of journalism, it is by definition about exposing what someone somewhere doesn’t want to see in print, and “the rest is advertising”.

At Margo's suggestion, this contribution to Aid for Who? is worth a separate debate / conversation on Indonesia: "We could save ourselves an awful lot of billions of dollars, and arguably put them to far better use, than investing them in this ‘relationship’."

Former Greens leader Bob Brown says: “While I welcome Mr Turnbull to the party, I am concerned over these branch stacks by unruly mobs of disgruntled former Liberals.”

The big end of town looks after the big end of town, under AWAs or otherwise. If you are from town’s other end, Mr Howard would have you believe that your tailor-made AWA will look after you, too. Then again, if you believe that, he might like to hear from you personally. There is a fantastic bridge near his Sydney residence.

So perhaps we should clarify the issue and ask at this point: Given that it is so often seen as desirable, just what is wrong with revenge?

"The Southern Cross was the emblem raised in the boldest and most effective democratic initiative ever taken in Australian history. That to my mind is a good enough reason to fly it perpetually in Ballarat, and to raise it on November 29th every year all over the land.": Ian MacDougal

"James Lovelock’s major concern is rising CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, what it is likely to do to us, and what we in turn can do about it. That is, if it is not too late already to avoid a runaway greenhouse effect." Ian MacDougall

"Wildfires do not respect state or national borders around the world. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) nominated 1997-98 as the Year the Earth Burned, because of all the fires that year. Yet despite and because of Australia’s own record of disastrous fires, Pyne says that she stands out among developed nations as having kept a tradition of controlled burning, and of not attempting elimination of fire from the land as other nations have done. This has made Australia something of a beacon to US fire officers. “For 30 years” he says, “the recognition has been widespread within the American fire community that fire’s attempted exclusion was a mistake; and the appreciation has grown that the fundamental error was not that fire agencies suppressed wildfires but that they ceased to light controlled ones.”" Ian MacDougall

"As McKnight points out, there is now no socialist movement to offer an alternative pole of attraction. The 150 year old socialist tradition has largely gone, unremarked and unmourned. The New Left, which rose in the 1960s and matured in the 1970s, has also joined socialism, at least as the world knew it, in the dustbin of history. “It’s now clear,” he says, ” that the socialist component of the New Left was the last gasp of an older Left, not the promise of a renewed one.” In its place, he sees the modern ‘broad’ Left (which to him includes members and supporters of the ALP, Democrats and Greens across to some current supporters of the Liberal and National parties.) But as far as he is concerned, all those people are standing on an eroding philosophical sandbank." Ian MacDougall

This long, thoughtful piece by Ian MacDougall argues the case for war by means of a deep engagement with and considered response to Scott Burchill's piece 'Counterspin: Pro-war mythology'. I highly recommend it.