Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston |
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The 'War on Terror' - why we lost
Jack Robertson is a Webdiary veteran and close friend of Margo's, who's been off licking his wounds for a while. The following 'rant' was originally posted on the Lolita thread, rather personally to 'Hames', 'Hammers', 'Alcorn' (me). 'Rant' in this case means structurelessness, and it is only these technical reasons that I didn't immediately post it as a thread by itself. With encouragement from Jacob, however, I agree that there is too much glorious, provocative content, along with a very entertaining prose, to leave it with the discussion of Lolita. I've just cut out the most personalised bits at the beginning and end to make it, more or less, an essay addressing its title subject. Hamish Alcorn
by Jack Robertson
Saw Margo a couple of weeks ago, and she seems relaxed and well, all things considered. Keeping healthy, keeping busy - but not too busy... like a few of us I think she's spent a bit of time getting some perspective and balance back after five years of pretty intense political engagement. Tho' I have to say that looking around at the political state-of-play, as it were, we agreed - OK, obviously, both of us would say as much, huh! - that the Webdiary archives of the last half-decade do stand up pretty well in retrospect. Not that anyone of any importance in Howard's Oz cares to waste time reading old 'Leftist Moonbat rants', I suppose. Especially those that are looking more and more sane every day. There are few people on the planet now who haven't - finally - cottoned onto the standing sad joke that is the Bush Administration, methinks.
It's all too late now, of course. The die's cast. The geo-strategic trap is sprung. Iraq has doomed American projectable power, and that means it's doomed our future proxy-leverage, for all the Sheridan ANZUS-crowing otherwise going on just now. All that is to come of the current epoch are the decades of Western bankruptcy, internal implosion and, eventually, a slow subjugation under the next globo-historical wave, no doubt a Chinese tsunami of some kind. (Oy, where's Piljabber or Tariq when you need a good fresh cliché or two about Yankee decline and fall, eh, Hames!) Well, if we're lucky I s'pose Howard's outstanding dual lickspittling of late might just see our kiddies' kiddies gainfully employed as White Trash coolies of some brand, in a relatively peaceful and not-too-impoverished enlightened New Dynasty Australian satrapy, say.
Hey, it's probably a good thing in big picture terms: it's highly likely that only a slightly-more-liberal autocratic centralism of the kind a post-Commie China will - might - spew forth can hope to deal properly with global warming. 'Coz if ever we needed a fucking benign dictatorial regime to 'persuade' us to STOP USING SO MUCH FUCKING CARBON-FUEL ENERGY, U MORONS - and I do mean at the barrel of a bloody gun if need be - then it's... well, ten years ago.
If that makes me a fringe-zealot... whatever. If you're on the fringe of an island nation you're usually the first one to drown in a flood, anyway, so as ever I feel entirely justified in screaming like a kook on this particular matter, I do. But even far saner noggins than mine ought to be able to see by now that steady-as-she-goes 'mainstream democracy' + 'free market' anarchy will never = the kind of mass behavioural changes required, certainly not quickly enough. Anyone who has ever been involved in big scale disaster relief must know this; for every person who'll take your polite word that there's a bushfire a-comin', there's usually at least one, and usually more, who need to hear a slightly more 'vigorous' argument.
How that can best translate in globo-political terms - OK, yes, yes, preferably without us having to suffer some kind of New Jackboot along the way, fine - is a matter on which I'll gladly take any suggestions going. Seems to me that Gore's current global flick-a-thon is not a bad attempt - but note, predictably, the spoiling bullshit he's copping from all the usual suspects. (When-o-when are these dozy fuckers going to STOP playing politics with our future and start pulling their fucken heads in, Alcorn? I arx ya... fine, if they don't want to actually help, don't. But for Christ's sake, can they not STOP actively hindering the rest of us? They do live on the same planet, the cloth-eared twats...)
Oh, but they won't stop sniping, of course they won't. Not even when the bloody Atlantic is lapping at their nuts, way up there in the PNAC boardroom on the fiftieth frigging floor. Being a dopy reactionary means never having to do anything but... react = attack. Who, what, how, when... it doesn't really matter. So long as there's always 'someone' easy to... attack. To... blame.
The New Enlightenment, post-9/11:
We Know EXACTLY Whose Fault This [insert latest power failure of the moment here] Is - It's NOT Ours!
So maybe in the long run, as far as both the 'war on terrorism' and the 'clash of civilisations' goes, Hammers, it's not such be a bad thing that we've already lost both. At least in China the powerful elites don't respond to each new calamity with a new round of blaming everything away... from themselves. (OK, granted, so why bother when it's just as easy to shoot your critics as to deflect their criticisms elsewhere... but... well, you know.)
But power without accountability, without embraced responsibility = the death of any culture. It's why we've already lost the 'war against terror' (snickers... sorry, H, just can't help it, even after all these years). Nobody powerful wants to take responsibility for what happens after they've used their power now. (Hey, let's get into the swing of things and... blame the media for this...) Whatever - in the end, embraced responsibility for the use of power is the only thing that truly motivates related ideas like... erm, the successful use of power. Or, put another way, the successful avoidance of failure when using power. Ahem. 'Coz speaking from experience, and with all noble ideals and aspirations nudged quietly aside, the fear of being responsible for a fuck-up is probably the great motivating factor in military operations - in everything from planning to post-operation analysis. It's why a 'reactionary' political movement can never win an aggressive war of choice, like Iraq, too: if you feel that you can always blame someone or something else for your failures - that is, react to failure by sending it elsewhere rather than overcoming it - then there's no real reason to avoid it in the first place.
Iraq - from inception to now - is a textbook case of this. The classic political reactionary's failure to accept that any failure really is going to be his failure... the better to ensure he doesn't fail. Reactionaries, by definition (the lucky buggers), always have someone else to blame for the way things turn out. The buck never stops here in Reactionaryville.
All this, by the way, Hames, is Military Theory 101. The first thing you learn when you sign up is... there are never excuses. There's no such thing as an excuse. There are only outcomes. Excuses are for civilian dickwads.
Still, we lost the 'war on terror' - and we're losing Mark Steyn's equally absurd 'war for civilisation' - for more fundamental reasons, too. Like, they were both shit, unwinnable, non-existent 'wars' anyway, man. Just for fucking starters, dude. We lost them because there's only one way to lose such wars, and that is to declare them in the first place. That's the self-contained loss, right there. We lost them precisely because, and when, we declared them at all - when, like panic-stricken little children, we got spooked, by a couple of minor terrorism attacks, into turning our fucken brains into fucken mush and starting a war we'd already lost just by the starting of it, man. Because, their lot being the most self-obsessed generation in history, our Baby Boomer leaders panicked, and utterly lost it, and shat their dacks, and are still shitting their dacks. They all thought the fucken sky was falling in that day, and it was only the WTC. No, but they really, honestly, thought - and think (read the Op Ed pages, daily) - that 'no-one' has 'ever' faced a 'comparable' threat to the 'terrorist' one we face now. Not ever. Never. The world 'has changed'.
And so all sorts of idiotic, cowardly over-reactions are, allegedly, justified. Yes, they, alone in post-Enlightenment history, apparently, these pissant, selfish Boomer twats and dickwads, feel justified in pissing away everything good about Western civilisation, all for... sorry, to what end, again?
I'll tell you what, Hames: to protect their sorry fat lame Baby Boomer asses from... death. That's all the fucken post-9/11 'changed world' is all about. The chickenshit Baby Boomers are scared-waredy of... dying. They're getting older, and they've killed God, and as a generation they've lived greedy, nasty, rich, braying, self-applauding, vacuous, self-serving lives, and they've fucked up the planet and their kids' futures and their parents' post-WW2 legacy along the way to fund it all, in the greedy short term, and now, Left and Right and all in between, the poor greedy dears are shit-scared-terrified of what God and History and the drowning, choking planet's Third Worlders are fucken going to say to and about them, as they die, and after their deaths.
And so they are desperately trying to create a fucken 'great generation' Crusade of their own out of thin fucking air, to belatedly put some fucking meaning into their self-obsessed, meaningless lives.
It's... well, it's pathetic. So deracinated is their Humanity, so fucken internalised is their fucken identity, so utterly fucken self-centred is their chickenshit world view that these cretins - Left, Right, what-the-fuck-ever - actually think that their dying is just about the worst thing that can possibly ever happen. That their - Mr Rich, White, Western Boomer Planet Parasite's - getting blown up by a terrorist bomb is pretty much the WORLD'S HUGEST EVER CALAMITY, EVER!!
Jesus, grow a wad, you cockless Boomer wonders. Stop talking about your fucken SELVES for once. We're all gunna die, somehow, some day. Very probably in a car crash or of a heart attack.
Deal.
Nope, but so scaredy-waredy are they, Hames, the big tough professional right-wing yappers among 'em especially - the Mark Steyns, the Christopher Hitchens, the sundry bylined Murdochians, the Bushes, Blairs, Howards... all of these white middle-class Merchants of Fucken Panic - so terrified are they of the one thing that's going to come for us all - death - that they are prepared to invade countries, toss out the rule of law, support torture, tell lies, buy elections, erect gated communities, flog off public property, dice embryos, clone their dads, freeze their heads, sell their spunk, auction off their eggs, sell their babies foreskins to raise money to invent impossible cures for... death... shriek, screech, primp, pose, posture, cheat, murder, execute, steal, deny, lie, lie, lie, lie to themselves, relentlessly, about what it is their self-serving generation has been doing all along, for all their self-admiring media posturing... this stinking, stinking generation is like a fucking squealing, selfish survivor on a sinking life raft, an overloaded, descending plane... throwing everything not nailed down overboard - fellow passengers, the sick, the crippled, grannies, kids, dogs and cats, maps, food, water, decency, honour, truth, democracy, accountability... anything not nailed down - such that they, at least, might not get their scaredy-waredy little toesy-woesy wettened by Death... Jesus, so fucking terrified of dying are the gutless twerps driving this 'war on terror' that they are prepared to do pretty much anything.
Except, of course, fight the actual wars themselves - you might die, huh. It's no coincidence that the chickenshit PJ O'Rourkes of the Boomer generation - who wimped out of Vietnam by charging to the (non-combatant) Left - are the same chickenshits most fervently spruiking Iraq, charging to the (non-combatant) Right.
Go on, get even richer, PJ and all your Steynian, Hitchenesque clones: make a few more wryly ironic jokes while the real men do the hard work, as usual. Pissants. Such is what the fawners of Australia's 'conservative' elite truly think is 'moral clarity', the morons.
Flailing like shit-scared little bullies in the schoolyard, is what these fucken 'morally clear-eyed' war on terror absolute fucken fakes all are, in truth. Flailing, flailing at an enemy they can never beat, because that enemy is their own towering, panic-stricken cowardice... little shit-scared eyes tightly shut, little shit-scared ears covered, little shit-scared mouths ranting shit-scared nonsense in the dark: 'never before has there been such a threat!', and 'the world has chaaaaaaanged-waaaahhhhh-mummmeee!!!'...their shit-scared bully's undies filling with shit-scared shit... Ooooh, Mummy, Big Mummy Government Help! Help! The Dirty Sand Nigger-Bombers are a-comin' to get us! Lock them up in Gitmo, Big Mummy Guvment! Put up big walls, Big Mummy Guvment! Bomb them! Nuke them! Ban them! Yes, ban the dirty Sand Niggers, Big Mummy Guvment! All those other Nigger threats of the past - the wog niggers, the kike niggers, the eyeties, the nogs, slits, slants, even our own home-grown coon niggers - those Niggers were all one thing... but these Dirty Sand Niggers... why, we've never seen a threat to our Kultchoor like THIS before... so... OOOOH, HELP US! Big Mummy Government, save us! SAVE US from Sand Nigger-Bomber Death!
Yep, Hames, 'mighty' Western Civilisation is shit-scared, and it's fucking nauseating, quite frankly. It's fucking unedifying and it's fucking embarrassing and it's fucking pathetic. Most of all, though, it's a Gold-Plated Fucking Victory Handed on a Fucking Diamond Fucking Platter to Osama bin Fucking Laden. He must be pissing himself with joy.
I'm sorry, but he's dead right to, too: Osama gave us a pathetic little tap on the chin - at the very limit of his lame jabbing reach, he was, the utter nobody - and we reacted like he stuck a nuclear warhead up our arses and went 'Boom!'. So... well done, all you panic-stricken, jabbering, right-wing Steyn-arse-licking chickenshits.
Panic, panic, panic away. Panic our beloved Western Civ right on into the cultural fucking grave.
You know, Hames, we Westerners have got first class soldiers over there doing their goddamned best, every day in Afgh and Iraq and elsewhere - allegedly to uphold these here Western Civ - or Judeo-Christian, or Enlightenment, whatever the fuck - values of ours, roit? Right. And whatever you think about their being there, most will agree that these young guys and girls in uniform are at least trying to work their bloody guts out (ie when the civilian contractors are not ripping them off) right there at the coal-face where it may still just count in this 'war' (though I doubt it), to bridge the widening gap between 'us' Whiteys and 'them' Sand Niggers. Maybe separate the minority of too-far-gone extremist nutters from the majority of non-nutters, even; give the non-nutters a reason not to join this 'war of civilisations' at all - which is the only way we are ever going to deal with the growing extremist terrorist threat effectively. (ie call the whole fucken war off before it starts, ie before we thus automatically lose.)
Working hard over there, that is, to make the bulk of the world's Muslims keep wanting to not blow the fuck out of us, on balance. Mostly.
But meanwhile, what have we got back here in the safe-as-houses home front, from the wanker likes of Steyn and his groupies? We've got Professional 'War on Terror' panic-stirrers, making fortunes undoing all the good work those soldiers over there are doing on the hard front. That's what they are doing, make no mistake - every time a dickwad like Steyn stands up and makes another couple of hundred grand from hard-Right local organisations by spruiking up this 'clash of civilisations', the hard work of men like my brother - wounded twice and a DSM so far in Steyn's war, thank you Bush et al - gets put back another couple of months. It almost seems deliberate at times; every time the idealistic Yank GI in Baghdad makes some tentative progress winning hearts and minds... up jumps a Bush, or a Howard, or a Hitchens, or some other self-serving blowhard with a selfish agenda, and brays, to panic-stricken right-wing applause: 'OH NO YOU DON'T, SOLDIER...HEY, BRING IT ON AGAIN, SAND NIGGER!!'
But... ah, Jesus, our pathetic lot fill their fucking y-fronts with runny shit every time a local Sand Nigger in a pair of speedos walks across one of our precious beaches without singing Waltzing Matilda... so as if our intellectuals have got the bollocks and brains to beat a bin Laden in the war of ideas by refusing to engage on his chosen turf at all. Bah. How I wish we had thinkers as grown-up and tough as our soldiers fighting the intellectual corner against al-Qaeda. Men vaguely familiar with how to beat an asymmetric threat, for one thing.
Instead we get wussy little scaredy-cat shriekers like Steyn. Fuck's sake.
If, as Western Civilisation surely does, a culture relies for its cultural 'strength' on its plurality, its inclusiveness, its capacity to absorb any and all other emerging cultures until they are part of its own - ie before the new culture comes to challenge, or dominate - then it follows that as soon as any other emerging culture is dignified as a 'threat' to be defeated - rather than an opportunity to be so subsumed, strengthening the dominant culture even more - then that dominant culture has already lost any so-called 'war for civilisation'. It might still win a subsequent 'war for hegemony' with the new culture, or a war for dynasty, or of occupation, or a war of conquest... but it might lose, too. It's all a matter of who's got the organised numbers, the manpower, the epochal legs... who's got the cultural hardness, you could say, AKA 'the least to lose in the long run'.
And in this case, it just ain't us. The 'Sand Niggers' have that all over us. Awkwardly, they also have the oil that has largely given us our transient technical and materiel edge over them for the last century. Well, this means at last that - now that we've probably lost any faint chance of coming to a sustainable accommodation with the world's oil producers (one not based on military superiority, in other words) - we're committed to fighting on their turf, and their terms, forever.
The Sand Niggers, I mean. Until we lose by grinding ourselves into their sand, I mean.
So Mark Steyn et al can go blue in the face until they explode in a righteous puff of hot air and (other people's) fighting-bravery, but this is one fight we f**ked up and lost precisely by choosing to allow ourselves to be suckered into fighting it at all. Morons.
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Doing something
Perhaps the contributors here are activists as well as talkers - I like to hope so, anyway.
The "babyboomers" - whoever they were - talked a lot, but also actually got out in the street. Not the kind of thing that happens much these days, particularly in Australia, evidently.
However, some genXers do turn their backs on personal materialism for the greater good. See http:oftheworld.tv
Some might just prefer to go to getup.org.au, in order to send an email to the american administration re military tribunals.
Possibly most will just keep worrying about the mortgage and Jaydenne's orthodonty.
A Parable For Our Time
A Parable for Our Time
The military-industrial complex is running on auto-pilot, with the conveyor set to the Middle East.
No need for Congressional debate any more. The US has ceased to bother with the pretense of democratic leadership. To rub the insult in properly, the installed leader of the free world is Ronald McBush.
There he smirks - a ju-ju christian and a moloch, sitting atop a pile of skulls that Pol Pot might have been proud of. Every night the grotesque TV sock-puppet masticates words as though they were gristle.
And the kids, confounded by the Big Lie, hide under the skirts of Aunty John Howard for safety.
But Aunty is a crafty old bag. While soothing her children with homilies about gingerbread houses and sugarplum mortgages, she steals their collective inheritance. Any dissidents go spit-spot to creepy old Uncle Phil, who alarms them with monster stories from the id and even worse, threatens them with grounding.
Will the children grow up in time? Is there anyone to turn to besides each other? Will they learn that their differences are trivial? Will they discover their magical powers in time?
[Excerpt from: Harry Potter and The War On Terror]
Talk about dishonesty and hypocrisy
I watched Tony Jones on Lateline interviewing a Professor Williams (against the methods of Control Orders) and a certain strange person named Peter Faris QC (in favour of Control Orders).
I have little trouble with the democratic views of the Professor, but I was sadly reminded of the NAZI excuses for these disastrous "Terrorist" laws by the "Howard" behaviour of Mr Faris.
He was not impartial, he even kept referring to the "leftists", "activists", and of course, the Labor Party.
His one excuse that really upset me was the assertion that it was the law!! Because I can remember when we were going to war with the Nazi regime in 1939 to fight and die to stop just that sort of thing which was happening in Germany, their allies and the occupied countries.
He kept repeating the Liberal's scam of "we are protecting the Australian people" by taking away the freedoms and liberties of those Australians we "suspect of being naughty or might someday be naughty". And all can be done in camera.
Does anyone remember the "ONUS OF PROOF" legislation of the Liberal PM Menzies - which went to referendum and was roundly defeated by the people? This was the excuse to overcome the "Communists under the bed" fear that the Liberals had instilled in the Australian society.
Substitute "Terrorists" for "Communists" and you have the same Nazi method of dictatorial control.
And I warrant that there are still enough decent and un-blinkered Australians to "soundly defeat that too IF WE HAD A REFERENDUM".
When you have the power to remove just one citizen's rights to democratic processes, you are NOT protecting the others, you are THREATENING them too.
NE OUBLIE.
the tide is turning
A story that will gladen the hearts of some, and sadden others. I have attended the Dally M Awards as a guest on a friend's table for 5 years now - not a big footy fan but it's quite a fun night. Someone always puts in an appearance, last year it was the gorgeous Jennifer Hawkins, but always John Howard without fail. He arrived fairly late and I have never, never heard him received with such loud boos ever at a function. And I have seen him at dozens, of every description, over the past ten years.
I believe the game is over for Howard. Certainly at an event like this he could always expect polite applause and nothing like a reception like this. His usual beam evaporated and he melted quickly to the side.
One should never overstay one's welcome.
Silk
Far be it from me, Fiona, to question a lady's motives. It occurred to me recently that one doesn't choose to study/practice law so much as one is conscripted. I'm glad that you have escaped and I hope some day I shall too. There is something vulgar about the rituals and practices of the law - hardly suitable for a poet or a muse, like you or me. Your mind under the machinations of the law becomes like a bird with its sex pierced by a needle, as Lorca once wrote. One gets lost in the brutality of power, and, loses a piece of one's soul in the inelegance of legal thought. Someone needs to take a brush to it all - a fine, little brush, and lovingly erase all the hard-edges of the law.
JH wasn't allowed to go to Bankstown
Angela, a small correction re your earlier post. I think John Howard went to Canterbury Boys High, not Bankstown. I doubt whether JH would have been able to find his way to big bad Bankstown in those days, besides the wrong sort of people lived in the area; the Keatings and such.
Not Accidental But Inevitable
See War is not a solution for terrorism by Howard Zinn:
[extract]
Beyond the futility of armed force, and ultimately more important, is the fact that war in our time inevitably results in the indiscriminate killing of large numbers of people. To put it more bluntly, war is terrorism. That is why a "war on terrorism" is a contradiction in terms. Wars waged by nations, whether by the United States or Israel, are a hundred times more deadly for innocent people than the attacks by terrorists, vicious as they are.
The repeated excuse, given by both Pentagon spokespersons and Israeli officials, for dropping bombs where ordinary people live is that terrorists hide among civilians. Therefore the killing of innocent people (in Iraq, in Lebanon) is called accidental, whereas the deaths caused by terrorists (on 9/11, by Hezbollah rockets) are deliberate.
This is a false distinction, quickly refuted with a bit of thought. If a bomb is deliberately dropped on a house or a vehicle on the grounds that a "suspected terrorist" is inside (note the frequent use of the word suspected as evidence of the uncertainty surrounding targets), the resulting deaths of women and children may not be intentional. But neither are they accidental. The proper description is "inevitable."
So if an action will inevitably kill innocent people, it is as immoral as a deliberate attack on civilians. And when you consider that the number of innocent people dying inevitably in "accidental" events has been far, far greater than all the deaths deliberately caused by terrorists, one must reject war as a solution for terrorism.
Why we all support the Iraqi resistance
Ian McDougall: "As for Iraq, if the ‘resistance’ there intensifies to an all-out Sunni vs Shiite civil war, I know which side I would pick to win, and it is not the Sunnis."
I agree entirely.
I'm not in the least sympathetic to the likes of al Sadr, who is essentially an Iranian proxy - Moqtada Sadr is the nephew of Iranian President Mohammad Khatami's wife - but how in the name of God could anyone support the reactionary Sunni militias or Islamist nut cases who make up the hard core of the "resistance"?
Let alone pretend they are armies of "liberation" or "national struggle"?
It is highly indicative that even Iraqi Arabs are fleeing to Kurdistan to get away from the heroic "resistance":
"With sectarian violence boiling over in much of Iraq, tens of thousands of Arab families are on the move, searching for a safe place to live. Surprisingly, given the decades of brutal Sunni Arab rule over the Kurdish minority and the continuing ethnic tensions, many like Mr Abdul Rahman are settling in the secure provinces of Iraqi Kurdistan, run virtually as a separate country by the regional government.
The influx of Arabs has made many Kurds nervous, and regional leaders are debating whether to corral the Arabs into separate housing estates or camps."
By the way, did you hear about Iraq's flag being banned on Kurdish buildings?
No love lost there, either.
Thanks CP
C Parsons, thanks for the interesting links. (I did have a sub to the NYT but it does not seem to work any more.)
A highly autonomous or even independent Kurdistan is a distinct possibility coming out of the current situation.
i've missed you Jack
Geez it's good to read your stuff again Jack. Civilised and measured debate where no one is offended and proper language is adhered to certainly has it's place, but by Christ it's refreshing to read an impassioned rant like yours Jack.
The bastards make me incoherent with rage too and sometimes ya just gotta get it off your chest. I just wish I could do it with the style you manage Jack, thanks.
Lost in dislocation
Jack, allow me to interpret the rant by the spirit through which it was vented.
Lost? Yes, definitely. According to the Arabic version available at al-Jazeera, anyway. Hardly alcohol-fuelled, or crack-crazed, over there.
Imagine if a lone nut manages to detonate a thrup'ny bunger within cooee of Peter Pentecostello's November G20 corp-fest. Without a second's hesitation, it will be down to the Islamofascists before the ham-fanciers get a look in. Not our flannel-headed, swivel-hipped man from DFAT screeching "it's preposterous, it's outrageous, it's childish to suggest Australia wants to be a member of the nuke club", but "bring on the F16s" in cigar-chomping basso-profundo.
A few dozen mangled in a plane crash in Iran? No Aussies? Well, pffffft! A few hundred, or thousand dead of flood or plague in Africa? Too many brown bodies for the frame!
It's far more important to get a sharp and prolonged focus on a smidgeon of individual angst, and to know Jihad Jack must not phone Usama. Or anything about Jennifer Hawkins.
But, Downer is correct to console 200-odd millions of Muslims to our near north. Even though Indonesia has diplomatic relations with the US, as does Lebanon, it does not exchange the necessary pleasantries over caviar and pinot with Israel. And if you don't recognise Israel, well, you are up shit creek with a few thousand US-made kiddie-friendly cluster bomblets to get rid of before you can rebuild your house.
Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot the site had been fumigated.
A little more KY, please, Ernst. And be snappy, I've got an editorial to write.
(Crooked Jades has a tidy version of Shallow Brown.)
Did we lose?
Jack, I’m with Richard Phillipps on this. I’ve seen more profound stuff written on the wall of the public dunny (men’s) in town. I'm also with Michael de Angelos, where he asks: “Have we really ‘lost the war on terrorism?’".
To quote your own carefully chosen words of manifestly high precision:
Flailing like shit-scared little bullies in the schoolyard, is what these fucken 'morally clear-eyed' war on terror absolute fucken fakes all are, in truth. Flailing, flailing at an enemy they can never beat, because that enemy is their own towering, panic-stricken cowardice... little shit-scared eyes tightly shut, little shit-scared ears covered, little shit-scared mouths ranting shit-scared nonsense in the dark: 'never before has there been such a threat!', and 'the world has chaaaaaaanged-waaaahhhhh-mummmeee!!!'...their shit-scared bully's undies filling with shit-scared shit... Ooooh, Mummy, Big Mummy Government Help! Help! The Dirty Sand Nigger-Bombers are a-comin' to get us! Lock them up in Gitmo, Big Mummy Guvment! Put up big walls, Big Mummy Guvment! Bomb them! Nuke them! Ban them! Yes, ban the dirty Sand Niggers, Big Mummy Guvment! All those other Nigger threats of the past - the wog niggers, the kike niggers, the eyeties, the nogs, slits, slants, even our own home-grown coon niggers - those Niggers were all one thing... but these Dirty Sand Niggers... why, we've never seen a threat to our Kultchoor like THIS before... so... OOOOH, HELP US! Big Mummy Government, save us! SAVE US from Sand Nigger-Bomber Death!
Somewhere in all of that is the proposition that we can never beat the jihadist bombers because we are all too cowardly to do it on our own as individuals. We need the government (police, armed forces) to do it for us.
Now I disagree about the cowardice bit, but there is none the less some truth in that. The nation as a whole is only as strong as the ability of the people as a whole to defend themselves. A professional army drawn from a nation of Spartans would probably do better than one drawn from a nation of limp-wristed transvestites. Everyone should learn self-defence, in my opinion. It is good in many ways, and you never know when it might be needed. One also needs to be alert, say for unattended baggage in airports.
But the recent detections of alleged bomb plotters in the UK and Australia could only have been done by the state, and iIt would make little difference to the casualty figures whatever the physical fitness level of the bombed part of the population was. So what is the problem with that?
Terrorists will win if the death toll they manage to inflict keeps rising, despite any and all attempts by governments to stop it. But that is not happening, and will not short of use by them of WMD. Though terrorist use of nuclear weapons would have disastrous consequences for their victims as well as for any society that allowed itself to be used as their base, it is hard to see that even on that basis, they would ‘win’.
As for Iraq, if the ‘resistance’ there intensifies to an all-out Sunni vs Shiite civil war, I know which side I would pick to win, and it is not the Sunnis.
Regards
Hi all, thanks for your comments.
Goodness, and he can swear too!
Well there you go. All those paragraphs to show four points that most of us were not having much difficulty with. First, that most generations resent the one before. Now there's some news! hold the front page! Second, that the geopolitical balance of power is shifting. Well I suppose if you had a bag over your head for the last thirty years that would be news as well. Third, that America and its allies have made some mistakes in Iraq et al. Gee I would never have noticed. Someone simply must write a newspaper article on that. Fourth, that oil is declining as a reliable source of energy. I must tell all those companies and engineers working on hybrid cars and fuel cells and hydrogen cars and electric cars and solar energy and wind farms and nuclear energy and natural gas. Hey guys, oil is declining as a reliable source of energy!
And all this done in such a clever new style! A bit like the style that was invented, if it needed invention, by Jack Kerouac and his mates in the pre-boomer generation. And where did Kerouac end up? Fat, alcoholic, living at his mum's place and watching baseball on tv.
The swearing was good too. No one ever thought of swearing before! Gosh, it adds so much to the substantive comment. Not that there is a lot of substantive comment, but hey, you don't need much when you can complain about other people instead.
I can't say how refreshed and energised I feel by this clever, witty and thoughtful post. And how guilty I feel that I was born in 1951 amd not at some time relevant.
Jelena Popovic
Of course, Fiona dear, there is always Jelena Popovic.
Man, I'd like to pop her ov... well, you know what I mean, Fi, you're a woman of the world. Why, pray tell, have you not been made a silk yet? I reckon you'd be a catch.
Just not me
My predilections are my business, Solomon. However, I am prepared to disclose that the reason I've not yet taken silk is that I have not practised law for 15 years. My current profession is considerably more exciting.
Eye of the tiger...
I think, perhaps, Fiona, you're simply not giving her a chance. I mean look at this. She looks like a tigress in heat. Those savage eyes, those hands half-clawed. You can just picture her in wig and robes and feel a tremor in your bones. Reow! It is enough to turn Michael Kirby straight.
Human condition
Sure it’s a rave
And I love it………
Got lottsa truth in it.
Fear mongering in Oz
Bout time to take governing a bit more seriously. Policy isn’t only about getting re-elected! Sure power, like any form of addiction, can’t allow any alternative. John’s admitted this when he said that he was addicted to politics… more addicted to power I think!
I'm sick of the fear card!
Any thinking Australian from what ever cultural grouping or back ground, believes we are going to blend in the second and third generations. We are already moving past the limited Anglophile perception of what it means to be an Oz. It’s impossible to move globally without embracing the true future of an emerging Australia and who said it would be without pain. John’s xenophobia is sickening…
So long ago, I heard of the spin about the commies subverting our good ol True Blue way of life here with the caravan I think lead by Charlie Perkins, that moved around the rural north during the early 60’s, teaching our Indigenous Slim Dusty lovers, that they should expect a good days pay for a good days work. Pretty fair I think. I’ll admit to having been a, shudder, Young Liberal and took the arguments then, as gospel. Sadness is how I feel now, about man’s inhumanity to man. . JWH is still back there in his thinking, a bigot and racist, forget what he does on Sundays’.
I hear all about the measures to limit Hezbollah’s ability to re-arm, though I must have some sort of hearing problem? I haven’t heard anything about what’s happening to Israel’s depleted missile and cluster bomb stocks ….. Oh, that’s right, they’re a sovereign nation and can ignore UN directives and the like; call the shots and even tell everyone else to go to and get… (no not that word), stuffed!
Like GWB, Blair and JWH, above the law, because they know what's best for us and after all don't the ends justify the means! They didn't care about WMD, what they cared about is retaining power. They don't care about terrorism, they care about being the powerful!
It seemed to me that some sense was expressed when the Senate told Johnny to stuff his Immigration Bill right up where it should go. Hopefully the next, will be a public outcry over our dwindling freedoms and privacy. Followed by a general outcry at the man’s stupidity about pre-emptive strikes in neighbouring Sovereign countries and other insanities he utters, thinking he's clever and his shit doesn't stink.
Thank you Jack Robertson
I would question one of your statements Jack
Have we really "lost the war on terrorism?". As this is a ongoing fable built on lies and sand with shaky foundations it was always bound to start to sink, even if ever so slowly. I think we are beginning to witness a bit of a seachange in the greatest unsustainable lie that's been foistered upon the public in two centuries. Just little clues give it away but once the big lie starts to unravel, the unravelling starts to pick up pace. I thought the Federal magistrate who ridiculed the inclusion of Osama Bin Laden on a non-contact list was an amazing sign. I see today John Howard's hackneyed old approach of whipping up a bit of interest in xenophobia which has worked so well in the past for him has simply reduced him to writing alongside the intellectual giant Piers Ackerman in the Daily Telegraph. I doubt readers of these rags rarely get past headlines, rather go straight to the sports pages. Certainly not enough that matter anyway.
Somebody wrote a thoughtful piece a few months ago that a person really should go out when they're at their peak and John Howard was one of them (John Laws the other - his listeners dropping of in the thousands or they risk dying from acute boredom). Howard decided to push the bondaries but it's all downhill for him now with landmines a'plenty ahead. In the US, George Bush, who was never together mentally at the beginning, is pretty much the same but now the majority of US people have become aware that something stinks about the whole game.
Sadly, it's going to take much longer for it to end and a lot more nasty things will happen. These people won't give up easily - this is when they'll fight their nastiest.
Waiting for Martin Luther-King II
Jack, I agree that the response to 9/11 was a ludicrous overreaction. Bush was playing the overcompensating tough guy and widespread hormones, greed, fear, and ignorance has been doing the rest.
Yes, it would be refreshing if someone charismatic and wise called the players on their evil deeds and showed the Way. But that someone needs to be skillful to avoid the pitfalls of appearing "emotional and irrational" and offending the powers that be and their ignorant supporters.
In a population of 6 billion people, that wise charismatic someone will pop up any day now.
Can I ask?
What makes anyone here think the “war on terror” is a mistaken or frightened over-reaction by the governments of hitherto liberal democracies?
The “war on terror” has been used to frighten and confuse large numbers of citizens across the Anglophone world – under which conditions the state has moved to strengthen its own powers of deception, “security”, surveillance, arrest, detention, control, disinformation, and political censorship. This is no “mistake”.
This is an onslaught against the democratic values that Australia used to hold, and the beneficiaries are the mega-corporations – particularly those involved in the arms trade and the resources market. Like, high oil prices are like a tax on citizens that benefits Exxon-Mobil and the state. Nifty isn’t it? (As long as you're near the top in either corporation).
In the past 24 hours we’ve seen Sheriff George and Deputy John-Dawg say that the “war on terror” is generational in length. Yup, it’s Orwell’s perpetual war, and Downer’s Ministry of Peace Lies.
Except of course, there is no “war”. Even the US Supreme Court, in its most conservative incarnation, has ruled that no state of war can exist between a state and a criminal gang of terrorists.
What we have now is a system of state terror that bombs civilians in other countries, and imprisons citizens at home.
Now, Jack asks “what is to be done”, but I suspect he won’t like the answer I have for him.
Peace takes courage.
Justice takes courage.
Anything worthwhile requires dedication, risk-taking, and hard work.
Life, as my old mate Malcolm Fraser used to say, is not meant to be easy.
Now, I’m a baby-boomer, Jack, and I appreciate a bit of existential despair as much as the next tonka toy, but I don’t identify with the mewling apathetic whining subservient spineless consumers you speak of who believe in a world where everything gets done for them once they utter the magic words “I want” or “I think”.
I joined the resistance.
All you have to do is risk your life, your house, your wealth, and your reputation by standing up for justice, and throwing sand in the machinery of war. It’s a hoot. Life becomes good as the power of the human spirit is unleashed to the benefit of our democracy and our values.
Give it a try, sport, and for God’s sake stop whining.
Crennan J
Inclination
Written like a red-blooded young man, Solomon; I congratulate you for wearing your heart (or something) on your sleeve (or somewhere). But, with all due respect to Crennan J., she does nothing for moi, dear.
Sounds about right to me
Some may call it a rant, but I reckon you hit the nail on the head Jack.
There is only one great mystery to me. In this great farce called the "war on terra" that has ruled the airwaves since 2001, and today with a central terry-wrist in the unlikely figure of Jack Thomas [who apparently has 20 million Aussies, the AFP, ASIO and assorted personalities like Miranda Devine and Peter Farris QC all a'quaking in their boots and hiding under their beds in the belief that he is in telepathic contact with the mythical Osama Bin Laden - my wife, a clairvoyant, swears he's been holed up in the top floor of the Cairo Hilton for the last 3 years], what exactly is in it for little Johnny Howard in this great debacle that will surely go down in history as a period of true insanity (if we survive a possible nuclear holocaust brought on by the the mad US Glove Puppet)?
The one thing Australian pollies can't do is make money, while they are in Parliament, out of their policies (except for the exceptional case of the great Labor Party phony Bob Carr and his instant move into the Macquarie Bank upon retirement).
The opposite happens in the US. The Bush family has always been at the forefront of every hideous human catastrophe from the beginning of the last century so we know what they are on about. George Bush's favourite Uncle Bucky made over $2 million dollars last year just from his shares in a company that supplies parts to Black Hawk helicopters. And that's just small beer for the Bush clan.
As the conservative Republican Pat Robertson put it, the Iraq War was the greatest handover of public money to private hands the world has ever seen.
But what makes Howard really tick if he's not even in for the money?
In a moment of madness I listened to the mincing voice of Alan Jones one morning a few years ago as I drove into the city, and an elderly lady rang up Jones and said she remembered John Howard as a young boy working behind the counter of his father's service station in Earlwood.
"Oh and what was he like ?" enquired Jones as I (like Jones no doubt) expected a sickening laudation of the future PM from what sounded like a typical upper North Shore matron.
"Oh I thought he was a horrible little boy. In fact he was quite a nasty little prig" she replied.
She was immediately cut off.
Hi Michael L.A.
Hi Michael, John Howard as a child, developing, going through puberty, learning about life... now come on, with his natural atributes - none - he must have had a pretty tough time at Bankstown High. I reckon he soon learned to have two big mates, dumber than dumb, on either side of him to take his punches. His hasn't forgotten that one. Nor has he lost his petrol smell (now what investigation was that Prof Fels? Bye).
I too have wondered if the power and the glory were enough for him to do what he does. He is said to glorify and reward loyalty (much as Ming) and this explains the elevation of clearly incompetent and probable corrupt allies to ambasadors and assist in board positions and enquiry heads - nice pyramid scheme salaries there to be made from share holders and taxpayers. His ex-staffer Joshua failed at politics, and was given a VP Goldman Sachs Bank position - at his age, not bad. Just reward no doubt. Our ambasador to the US made VP of a multibillion buck investment company, our failed ministers made ambassadors or directors here or internationally, all very pally-wally and rewarding.
His own family are making good too it seems. Watched the brat in the Republican party Presidential election campaign gaining ideas how to bring Diebold here to rig our elections too, no doubt. Already it sneaks in for the blind here, despite the clear faults and rigging in Ohio etc. I notice Diebold's failure to provide reliable voting machines didn't stop them supplying the CBA with autotellers - hey print out receipts too. How can a bank rely upon such a company with such a record?
Actually, he hasn't retired at this "pinnacle" despite advice by Murdoch to do so and the target practice he suffered from Bush et al for his ugliness (how cruel, sniff), so I wonder what will become of him and why he hasn't gone... really, why?
Malcolm Turnbull? Wasn't he in charge of Goldman Sachs when they supervised HIH crashing down? Nice damage control at the time but always a bit vulnerable to a revision methinks. Bit like OneTel. Maybe not, but we don't know without an enquiry do we? Interesting he would change pathways for such a change in salary too.
Goldman Sachs. So often behind the power plays. So clever in realpolitik. Look at the new head of Finance in the US. Now who financed the evangelical churches in their massive building activities? That huge voting block. I wonder who finances the Assemblies of God here and their offshoots? Who was involved in the oligarch money debacle in Russia? 'Follow the money' is so rarely done in history but it certainly gives a clearer picture of the action above the glass ceiling.
One gets the feeling there are groups with their banks and their political friends and foes and aims and counter aims. BCCI was an interesting study in this. I note they were bombed in Istanbul. Take that losers. Stephens out.
Anyway, follow the money and motives and means Michael. To the next generation perhaps eh?
Cheers.
PS. One thing about Ming was his "realistic" view of the ME and the Suez crisis, where he led with care for our benefit as a nation (see Diary Sir Robert Menzies). But then, unlike Howard (998) and Bush (1998) and Beazely (during the Iraq War no less! and two other times Hallelujah), he never had his conversion flight to Israel and the Sharon escorted tour. Ho hum. Ruddock seems to like visiting Lebanon - or did. And it used to be the visit to Washington for approval in the old days. Funny if we all have the same iconic art hanging on our walls for good luck that you buy everywhere there.
PPS. Imagine Howard taken out at the Pentagon and Ian Thorpe taken out at the Twin Towers. No stopping the Aussie people then in their war on the Bin Ladin phantom. National Icons are so valuable for triggering mob reaction. I wonder who it will be. Current bets are 10 and 17 October on the internet gambling sites. Cute.
Guess who the first person Howard "met " with on his last visit? Armitage and his new think tank. How sweet.
These guys have it hand over fist as far as organised and monied goes, even if they are a tiny minority...
Disaster, ignominy and fragmentation
One of JR's more pungent themes here is the "scaredy-waredy" leadership with which the Free World has been encumbered. His take resonates somewhat with my own view of the sycophancy of the Prime Minister's relationship with theUS Australia USA
For a central theme in the Australian pro-war narrative has been that JWH's apparently visceral commitment to GWB's "war on terror" is due to the fact that JWH was in Washington DC on September 11 2001. What's more, folks, he had visited the Pentagon a mere matter of hours before it was devastatingly struck by Flight 77.
But hey, give it a rest! Is the possibility that "JWH coulda died, mate" really a serious basis for surrendering any part ofAustralia US
Sure, as a relatively transient issue, it might give one pause to ponder whether JWH really is so indispensable as some of his marginal-seat backbenchers seem to believe. But to elevate JWH's "brush with death" as some kind of human-interest justification for bone-headed foreign policy is just too much altogether, a kiddies' gross-out on fairy-floss.
The truth is that Mr Howard "blinked". Our (then prospective) man-of-steel failed to exercise the ticker he claims to possess. Or, to borrow JR's idiom, JWH kacked his trackies and ran shrieking to GWB to "pwease make it aw bettah, Mummy Guvment".
No, I don't want to hear any more of Mr Howard's puling whine about his weawwy fwightening existential cwisis. From 2001 on, I waited to hear him explain how his government would calmly and rationally assess the nature and extent of the threat. And what steps he would take to calmly and judiciously deal with a complex problem. And how he would projectAustralia
Instead we got disaster, ignominy and fragmentation. Disaster on two fronts,Afghanistan Iraq
And fragmentation? Well, to begin with, perhaps watch this thread, or visit others on this or related topics. One may catch frequent glimpses everywhere, for example, in arch-Howard supporter Paul Gray's call for "someone" to actually apologise to Mark Latham, because the latter got it right on Iraq while the man-of-steel got it so wrong (The Australian, March 21 2006).
Hell no, folks, I'm not a Howard Hater. Just a Howard Sceptic. But it really is time for the old man to retire. No, not in favour of the dolt Costello; I reckon Turnbull could make a halfway-decent HoG - at least, quite possibly a lesser evil. Ahh, just a thought.
F**k?
So, can I take it that "fuck" is now officially off the banned list at Webdiary?
Hamish: perhaps - it has been me letting it through, and I ain't the sole and final authority. Can I request that we use the word a bit judiciously, or something?
Oh the language uninviting
Hamish, well I dunno. Jack rather lost me when he descended into the gutter with his language and descriptive phrase/metaphor. Don't think I am a prude, and I could match it with the stockmen round the yards if I chose to, but I don't, because I think it diminishes one personally and reflects a lack of respect for those who may be offended. Obviously one does not have to read rants like this, but I think it starts to take us into the domain of sites where this sort of stuff is par for the course. But if others are amused by it, then so be it.
I first encountered the F word being used in daily speech back in the early 70s when I moved out of the religious and conservative rural environment I had known all my life, and started to mix it with lefties, bumping into the odd radical feminist on the way, (and they seemed to somehow believe that using the F word to any male audience was liberating!). They were of course all of the boomer generation, though Ian and I predated most of them by five years. It was a bit of a culture shock to me. However, I realised later that the majority of boomers, and other people I knew rarely if ever resorted to the use of that word. And today I rarely hear it amongst any people I know, old or young. In most circles, it is still a word that many people find offensive.
I do not think that word, or gutter analogy, description or metaphor ever serves to convince one of a point of view. It has the same effect on me as such TV programs as the ABC drama Wildside, in which the rather dysfunctional and clearly disturbed cops were shouting abuse at all and sundry at the top of their voices, punctuating their ad lib lines with the F word repeatedly and ad nauseum. Soon in all the abuse and swearing any story line that might have existed was completely lost, and most I know just switched off after one or two episodes. Jack's rant had a bit of the same effect on me.
Frankly, the F word is so overused, it is becoming a bore, and cliched. Can we find a new one, please?
Anyway, each to his/her own. Far be it for me to spoil the fun, or stop anyone from venting their spleen in this way, if that is what they need to do.
I do not really agree with Jack's overall take on the boomer generation. The description does not fit most boomers I know, in fact quite the opposite. Nor do they really get around fearing death! Most are fronting up to it in the near future anyway, and far too many I knew and loved are already gone. In fact, it is the younger folk and travellers and revellers that are losing life and limb in train and holiday resort bombings, not Boomers. Many are toddling around the countryside in their vans like nomads. I for one am more concerned for the young folk, than for myself. We Boomers and pre Boomers are the lucky ones. We had relative peace in our time thanks to the sacrifices of our parents and grandparents generation.
I do not think we were a wasteful selfish generation. We greatly appreciated the sacrifices of our parents to give us life chances and education that most of them could only dream about. And we saw that our children, (who are now in their mid thirties, early forties), benefited from that legacy. We have not squandered our hard won inheritance. We have a social conscience. We care about the environment and if anything try actively to instill that concern in our now adult children also.
Anyway, cheers to Jack. No offence. I did find parts of his Post spot on, Hamish. I will still talk to you even if you swear at me, even tell me to F off. This lady has a fairly tough hide. Gentle heart though! BTW. Really glad to hear Margo is getting along OK.
F**k
G'day Jenny.
This is what it says in the Webdiary guidelines that Jack himself drafted:
All swear words up to and including f**k may if thought absolutely necessary be used in full. F**k and its derivatives must be asterixed, thus: 'f**k'. This represents the extreme end of the foul language permitted at Webdiary, and should be used very sparingly if at all.
As I said it was me who let the rule slip and I'll endeavour to not do it again. I reckon the guideline is about right, all things considered.
F**k the Judges
Of course I will use the word fucking judicially. You fucking well know me.
You wouldn't ... err ... would you?
Boom And Bust
Wow! Thanks Jack. Your 'rant' resonates so much that my ears are ringing!
At the risk of having some wanker call me a self-hating Boomer, I think you are right to lay into my generation for its cowardice and childish refusal to take responsibility for anything.
On Margo's watch, I wrote that I was ashamed of the cowardice of a society that would allow that state to undermine the right to a fair trial and the presumption of innocence. These are fundamental pillars of a liberal democracy and to even contemplate giving these away for some illusions of security is infuriatingly gutless.
I think it is not just fear of death that drives us degenerates, though. We are, I believe, afraid of any hardship at all, and the concept of delayed gratification is so passé. We spoiled brats have no sense of responsibility to future generations, and will gladly hand over a terminal planetary ecosystem and unpayable debt rather than take any medicine ourselves.
I also think that this fear of hardship is at the core of the blatantly dishonest response to11-09-2001 . This new 'Pearl Harbour'
was seized upon by the unscrupulous to implement what Richard Heinberg described
as the last-man-standing scrabble for the black gold that flows through the
sclerotic veins of our industrial society and without which our war machines are
f***ing useless.
Civilisations, like economies, are boom and bust creatures. Since WWII we've boomed like never before and my guess is that we are in for a major bust before too long. The current circus of fear and loathing keeps us all from talking about, let alone doing anything about, the herd of elephants trashing the room.
Good to get that off his chest
Well, good that he's got that off his chest. Rant is the right word. It's all a bit heavy breathing and salivating though and he does seem to have an issue with baby boomers. If he is one he clearly isn't fond of himself and if his parents were then something went really wrong there.
I don't think fear is any greater in those closer to the 'big jump.' I think a lot of young people in their thirties are probably more fearful because they are the ones mortgaged up to the hilt and looking up at the interest rate and instant dismissal swords.
But I do think there is a lot more fear at work in the world and certain vested interests are playing on that fear. Whether it is the arms dealers, the oil dealers, the political dealers, the 'secret cabal which wants world domination', or a combination of all of them, their weapon is fear and it works well, regardless of age or stage.
I also suspect that people are too busy to think a lot of the time and too swamped in information, much of it useless, to think clearly.
At the same time I have enormous respect and admiration for human nature and the capacity of people to find their way through the worst of things. The sky does not fall, and, even if it did, people would find a way to 'hold it up.'
Day of the hunter
Good to read some Aus gonzo, it’s a rave, some of it's sweepingly generalisingly wrong, yet somehow it gets so much right. Much needed, especially now that Howard is switching to full Nixon mode, apart from the pulling out of an unpopular war bit.
When the going is weird the weird turn pro, and when the "mainstream" is bed-wetting, insane and paranoid, sanity is found elsewhere. Let's take these self-centred, dumb-assed, greedy, prejudice peddling, beat up on the weak, shovel money to the rich, bastards down!
Dismantle their crap, reveal their lies, ridicule their fear and de-legitimate their authority. Let the headlines read, "Free citizens tell authoritarian, fear-mongering, dog whistling, government to fuck-off!" And hey John we're not "integrating" with yourAustralia
Oh, there is a heart and soul...
Oh, oh! - there is a heart and soul right here in Webdiary - and that heart is beating right now. I can feel it.
Jack Robertson, I dips me lid.
Moderators, thank you!