Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

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?

Recently, my understanding of the nature of Webdiary and that of Fairfax suddenly and dramatically diverged, and as a result I ended my relationship with smh.com.au.

Webdiarists, please feel free to ask any questions you like about what happened and why in comments to this statement. I will answer all bona fide questions unless I am unable to do so due to legal considerations arising from the termination of my contract to write for, edit and publish Webdiary for smh.com.au for three years.

To suddenly uproot and take Club Chaos on the road to find a new home would be a mammoth challenge, and while many in the Club Chaos community seemingly embraced a Taking It To The Streets (TITTS) approach to life, whether the crowd would commute with the Pub’s relocation was always going to be risky.

Plus, the creation of a new kickarse pub meant the crowd would have to gather in temporary digs as the new and improved Club was built.

Yet Kingo had a dream - a field of dreams - that whispered, "if you build it, they will come".

"You just have to have an opinion and a desire to contribute its complimentary strengths to the constructive Webdiary mix. Nobody else on this planet can express the unique ideas in your head - claiming to know what you think, or aspire to, or mean, or believe, or hate, or are frightened by - except you. So long as you follow Margo’s house rules you are warmly welcome to do so. Share your ideas with the front bar crowd and you’ll soon learn why those who have been returning to drink here again and again for years are so loyal to the generous, tenacious, optimistic and bighearted publican leaning on the counter behind the bar."

As has been related by Margo elsewhere, one step on my journey to this place was a meeting with our local MP, Tony Abbott, to express our concerns about the way the war in Iraq had been handled. In that meeting Abbott said “if in the end there are no WMD and Iraq has a fundamentalist government, it won’t have been worth it”. We asked him if he was prepared to debate that in a public forum, and to his credit he said yes, and duly did – you can read a full transcript of the debate at the North Shore Peace and Democracy website.

When we came to advertise the debate with a media release, Margo pitched up in our dining room with a bottle of red and (with frequent breaks for her to nip outside for a smoke) we talked into the night about how hard it was getting to have real debate in Australian politics – both sides just shout slogans and issue soundbites that belittle or ignore the other side – and there almost always is a real point of concern in the view from the other side.

Holding my pen, though the ink has run dried,
But I know these walls will speak,
To tell to the world, all the things they try to hide,
The words and views that should be heard.

What have they done to my lovely country,
Why all the trees are so still?
The only birds that fly are those made of steel,
They flatten my mountains and my hills.

We've arrived in Futureworld now.  In this new world, the people will be empowered by technology to redress the power balance. For a long time, the powerful have been concentrating control.  Media in Australia is less diverse, less independent, and less interesting than ever. Politics seems more cynical than ever and business seems more ruthless than ever.  Media, politics and business work in ways that only a short time ago were considered unthinkable.

For years, I took no interest in political affairs or debate. It is far easier, in some ways, to take what is dished out by our leaders and just join the line at the checkout. But I found myself incensed at the latest Iraq invasion, and at the misleading manner in which our leaders swindled the public into supporting their neo-colonial resource war. Our other military engagements closer to home, in particular our involvement in East Timor, I found just as misleading and contrived, as it too smelt of neo-colonial greed over vital resources.

Those who profess to favour freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning and they want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters:

This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted.

As the new age of the internet public media continues to dawn it is indeed exciting to be part of the new digital world of socially responsive and interactive journalism. Like the universe itself there are many uncharted regions here and the patrons of Club Chaos are going to have to get used to some new rides and some new drinks.

If we were immortal we could contemplate knowing it all. We could harbour ambitions of total understanding and comprehension of all things. We could pretend that we, as individuals, seek the truth. It might even be some kind of race: which immortal can reach Nirvana first? Our mortality says to us, quite simply, ‘Forget it, you’ll be dead before you’ve really started’.