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Top Tens of 2006 ...Since everyone else seems to be compiling lists, here's a space to write your own personal top ten list for 2006. Here's mine:
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Global Warming Panic - 2006 was Australia's 11th warmest year
Sorry, I only have a Top Eleventh...
Something for everyone there....
Top Ten Wish List for 2007
1. John Howard either produces an acceptable exit strategy for Iraq or exits Australian politics. The latter is more likely.
2. Alexander Downer resigns after exposure of deceptions and scaremongering regarding (a) North Korea (b) Iraq (c) Iran (d) the AWB (e) terrorism in Australia.
3. Dick Cheney finally confesses that he's manipulating the leadership of at least five countries.
4. Rupert Murdoch forbidden to publish anywhere where there isn't a second newspaper.
5. Landowners at the mouth of the Murray River seceed from Australia and seize control of the country's largest freshwater lake in the national interest of not allowing it to fall into Cheney's hands.
6. US long term ambitions for Antarctica revealed.
7. Passage of legislation outlawing the fraud of portraying internationally owned subsidiaries in the media as Australian companies.
8. Mandatory 75% Australian content law imposed on all media.
9. World leaders visiting Sydney develop amnesia, forget which corporations are funding their retirement packages and begin to work for their own populations.
10. Margo Kingston picks up her pen again.
To Richard T.
Here, here!
There are plenty more desperate wishes where those come from Richard but, wouldn't it be a wonderful chance to take back Australia from foreign interests?
I have a comprehensive list of the Howard government's crimes against humanity (especially the Australian people) which I hope to print in the new year.
One refers to the Menzies' idea of a "ballot of death" to increase the gun fodder for more American imperialism. I doubt that Howard will bring it in so openly as did his idol but, I believe that he will sneak it past the "selective blind eyes" of his media by one method or another.
There is nothing beyond "ploppy pants" and his "New Order" government of depraved indifference.
The only "democratic right" he has left unhindered by law for us, is a misinformed vote where he has minimised the "opposition" voters in every slimy way one can think of.
The U.S. fostered Dictatorship in Australia is starting to concern many true Liberals. Perhaps due to the realisation that, a fair and uninhibited election must take place in 2007 and "God willing" - the unaccountable and all-consuming power of Howard's fascists is removed.
Then a new and true democratic government of the people, for the people and by the people should revisit our abused Constitution by Referendum and remove the unintended "power grab" interpretation that Howard's appointees have placed upon it.
"They that can give up essential Liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety". Benjamin Franklin.
There is no truth - only the powers that be.
Truth and Karma
Ernest William: ."..wouldn't it be a wonderful chance to take back Australia from foreign interests?"
There was one win I didn't but should've put in my list. A couple of years back, while scraping tables at a jazz night I a bloke introduced himself to me. He was SA's rep to the Australian IT council. He said he'd heard about my Halliburton campaign and explained the predicament of small business going up against KBR for local contracts.
Anyway, a few months ago I heard the news that the tendering process for IT contracts had been altered to allow for a fair chance for real (not faux) SA business to win work. It can happen!
There's a bloody good chance, after the UK dockyards kerfuffle, that some correction can be also applied to the Adelaide naval contracts. I've spoken to a Liberal staffer who was repeatedly adamant that the AWD deal was intended to remain under Australian control- and you can see from the Partner Ships piece that such a classification only exists in the paperwork. However if the international network, and it's co-ordinators, responsible for the smaller contracts is now regarded internationally as of questionable solvency (not too mention accused in the US of scamming the equivalent set-up) then perhaps we'll see a change in trend here as well.
There is truth, Ernest, and karma also, though the powers that be would prefer us to remain ignorant of such potential weapons. The most important truth at the moment is that much that has been perpetrated is far from irreversible.
New Year Wishes
Ernest William, as the New Year dawns you had better wish that "ploppy pants" wins the next election, because if Labor gets in millions of Australians can look forward to a bleak future. The Union thugs running riot, family breadwinners without jobs, hospital "waiting lists" getting bigger and the public school system getting worse than it is now.
A fair and uninhibited election will take place in 2007 and the people will see through Labor's lies and poor policies, just as they have done in the last couple of elections.
Just try and resist your tirade against the media and the corporations (who employ millions) and direct your anger at your union mates who only hold the country back.
It is going to be a great 2007.
AVAST, YE LUBBER! OR WE'LL SWING YE FROM THE YARD ARM
Acco, for the love of Jesus, Mary and Guiseppe, please ease up on the desperately slothful reichsrobot routine.
We all know that the Australian Labor Party is an instrument of Satan, Moscow, the Comintern, the International Bad Policy Unit of the Vatican, Vietnam, New Zealand and Lefty Green idiocy worldwide, &c.
So give up, Acco, m’Lad. We hear your fierce piratical snorting (and love it), smell your rummy breath, and note your detailed economic and other arguments which rapidly demolish the Marxian plot of Kevin Rudd, Prince of Darknesssssss, m’Preciousssss.
Just take a long holiday somewhere with your carer, where the clatter of ward trolleys lulls you to sleep, until you wake up from the terrible dreams for your shots.
Soon you’ll be back with us, cutlass flashing and fresh as a daisy.
Just do it, Acco. If your friends can’t tell you, who can?
XXXXX
Parson Frère Jihad Jacques OAM née Woodforde, Chaplain to the Spanish Main, based in Hispaniola, close by the swampy killing fields of the horrid Jethro, brother to the oily hangman slave king of Crawdaddy via Los Alamos TX.
Top Ten????
Geting geeked by a reichrobot "libertarian"* on a rather silly Hayek site, with Jack Robertson going the arrrrrh! in one's defence. Thanks, Jack lad - extra tot o'rum for ye for that!
Frère Jihad Jacques OAM née Woodforde
*
Geeez…look what I got for using the perfectly formal and polite adjective “demidenkoid” as a mild, playful even, term of derision (but hardly abuse – it’s based on the work of our good friend HD who continues in the proud tradition of Stella Maria Miles Franklin when she went to the Kentucky coalfields).
And one made no references whatsoever to the antics of reichrobots, whether or not libertarian or of any political stripe.
But let’s not forget that the “libertarians” were the blokes who put up the Nazi Party candidate at the last Queensland State election. And done the Nats like a dinner. Sudetenland not annexed, apparently. Reichrobot scattered to the four winds.
God bless and Happy New Year to all.
XXXXX
Affectionate greetings from the reichrobots’ kindly (but firm) chief carer and therapist, Frère Jihad Jacques OAM née Woooooooødforde (?sp)
1. the surprise of the
1. the surprise of the year was my competitor going out of business, therefore doubling my business.
2.Nothing bad happened to my nearest and dearest, if one chooses to discount such as the Iraqi war, which these babes will surely pay for, alas.
3. Life, the universe and everything.
4. The pleasure and joy that I get from reading the pleasure and joy of new parents, suddenly, besottedly, in love....maybe they will understand the overwhelming importance of (2).
That's all, folks.
Only Ten?
No holidays, but good moments abounded
Ians' big farm machinery shed completed after three years.
Renewing special friendship with US Vietnam Vet after 37 years, and welcoming his son to Australia.
Bonnie new grandson in Adelaide.
AWB AGM and having our say to that Board.
Meeting up with Margo and Fiona.
Helping my late brother's son get a start in life.
1700 acres now clear of gal burr, watching the stacks burn!!
Sharing resources and bonding with drought affected neighbours.
A one off storm delivering three inches of rain, saving 5000 farm trees.
Special days with friends before they departed this world.
Family and travel top 2006
1. Springtime on the farm
2. Grandson's first steps while staying with us in London.
3. Birth of my niece in Boston
4. Red Square on a winter's night
5. The Grand Canyon on a winter's day
6. The Scottish Highlands in summer
7. The Canadian Rockies in Spring
8. Driving through Arizona and Nevada
9. Chelsea Flower Show
10. Christmas with the family by the beach.
A smatttering
Watching Jimmy Barnes drop in to have a jam with Jon Stevens on the stage of my family's music venue.
My eight year old daughter's first jam on keyboards with myself and the "house band" on open mike night
Finding the transcript of the US Under Secretary for Agriculture explaining how agriculture aid was being spent on restarting Iraq's oil supply, and then introducing America to Trevor Flugge (now availabe on the AWB thread)
Publishing in the Adelaide Advertiser the fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction.
The Dixie Chicks concert.
Meeting Margo
Figuring out that the black keys on a piano are actually useful. after all.
Finding out from the activist running Scott Parkin's case that I'd been of assistance.
Becoming a Webdiary moderator
Seeing my name come up as the Australian P.O.V in a piece published by Halliburton Watch.
Top ten personal moments in 2006
Top ten personal moments (in roughly chrono order)
1. Buying and settling into our new home, a heritage place in a 'burb we both love.
2. Immediately finding a tenant for the old house - a bit of luck that!
3. Seeing the smiling Sudanese refugees I worked with each weekend and hearing their English language skills improve over the year.
4. Being an integral part of the birth of our first daughter.
5. Hearing news of the birth of my second nephew.
6. Seeing our first-born son kissing his little sister for the first time, our daughter's first smile, and best of all the first meeting between our daughter and her great grandmother with all the kisses and smiles that followed.
7. Hanging our son's first watercolour on canvas in our home after it had appeared in his first 'art exhibition'.
8. Having the opportunity to chill out on Langkawi at the in-law's beautiful new place (and knowing we'll likely do it again next year, and the year after, etc).
9. Completing a number of challenging, but rewarding, organisational development projects over the year.
10. Working with David Roffey, Hamish Alcorn, Fiona Reynolds, Richard Tonkin, David Curry, Russell Darroch, Ross Chipendale, Carl Baker, Ian McPherson, David Browning, Nigel Sim, Roger Fedyk, and Michael Coleman over the course of the year to see Webdiary survive for more than a year beyond the day Margo had to call it a day as far as daily running of the site goes, and then even better ... seeing signs of Margo's return to good health.
With a bullet
(In no particular order)
The rock art of Injalak Hill, Arnhem Land
Hanging with my mum on her 70th birthday
The view from the top of The Castle, Morton National Park
Brisbane singer Jackie Marshall’s gorgeous debut album, Fight n’ Flight
Watching the sun rise over Nourlangie Rock, Kakadu
Midnight Oil’s induction into the ARIA Hall of Fame
Canoeing in Nitmiluk (Katherine Gorge)
The Star Wars Kid
20th Century Dog’s Madstream – and the exhilarating live performance of it at Hippo’s, Canberra
Kevin Rudd as Opposition Leader