Retarius and Anastasia

Post#181 Why Australia Must Get Out of Afghanistan Pronto

2012-01-15T13:34:00.003+08:00

Victoria Cross for Australia from http://www.defence.gov.au/

Ben Roberts-Smith, recipient of the Victoria Cross for his work in Afghanistan, has been reported recently as saying that the troops in the Ghan are becoming irritated by their compatriots who are discouraged by the progress of the war and calling for withdrawal.

I'm reluctant to dispute any recipient of the VC but I can't share Ben's faith in the cause. Ben is very good at killing the Queen's enemies but he doesn't have a realistic historical appreciation of the situation. In particular, the reports of progress in the training of the Afghan National Army and the police are irritating me. Anyone who can remember Vietnam must find the booster stories about the great advances being made by our proteges utterly fatuous.

This is the same drivel that was cranked out by the Free World Forces command as the doomed process of "Vietnamisation" took place. That was the programme whereby the indigenous lovers of democracy were mentored into being able to hold their own against the communist enemy. The phrases are being borrowed by the wagon-load for the Afghan scenario: "The province is secured"; "The enemy are demoralised"; "The quality of the local forces is greatly improved"; etcetera.

In Vietnam, although the commies gave the foreign forces of the USA, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand a few severe canings they never triumphed on the battlefield. It's only predictable; where the opposing forces on the ground are not the main forces of a superpower such as the USSR or the People's Republic of China, they can't hope to win major land battles and are restricted to guerilla operations and probing attacks. Of course, once the forces propping up the South Vietnameses government were removed the house of cards fell within two years. Likewise, in Afghanistan, the Taliban and Al Qaeda are hardly up to beating what is essentially the main force of NATO and ANZUS combined. There is no reason to believe that the Taliban will lose heart between now and the projected US withdrawal in 2014. The question is whether the Afghan forces can hold or defeat them. Once the foreign cat goes away, the Taliban meeces will play.

I suspect that most of the Afghan forces under foreign tuition are signing up to receive regular meals, clothing, boots and shelter. The little that I've seen of them indicates a great degree of slovenliness and timidity that makes a mockery of the propaganda stories. This is very similar to the experience of the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (aka The Men Who Persevered). They were on site from 1964 to 1973 and were still trying to inculcate the basics when they were withdrawn. The capacity of the majority of the trainees to absorb and apply was pitiful. A major reason for this is the unwillingness of foreign trainers to apply the sort of disciplinary pressure that is needed to make the training stick. In Afghanistan, where the recruits are making an increasing habit of shooting the trainers, there is good reason to be cautious.

The problem with the analysis by Ben Roberts-Smith is that he and his colleagues are looking at the quantitative progress under foreign guidance. The qualitative durability is another matter. It's not a question of how many schools are built or how many villages receive electricity; these are not military achievements. Even the killing of footsoldiers doesn't win the war if there is a relentless supply of fanatics to replace them.

To clarify with a metaphor. Consider a sandcastle built below the tide-line on a beach. It matters not whether it's a child's effort made with a few upturned buckets of sand,

or the product of a professional sand artist.

When the tide comes in, the sandcastle washes away.

Infrastructure in Afghanistan is like that. Improving it will simply provide more targets for the enemy when they resurge. We can't civilise Afghanistan and we can't guarantee that Al Qaeda will not return to the place, any more than we can guarantee to eliminate terrorist operations anywhere else on earth.

I now believe that the place isn't worth the wastage of any more life or limb. No amount of effort can make the impossible possible and there comes a time to walk away from a futile task.

In particular, I am repulsed by the injuries being suffered by our soldiers. Defence Department press releases don't contain words like maimed, blinded, deafened, brain-damaged, paralysed, amputated, horribly burned and so forth. If they did, people wouldn't react with relief at hearing that someone has "only" been wounded. I don't think that it's an accident that they don't specify detail. It wouldn't help recruiting; particularly when people come to know how shabbily the Australian Government treats wounded veterans.

Ben may not like to hear that he and his comrades are on a fool's errand, but that's the truth. Any decent citizen won't want to see it proven by repeating history.

Post#180 Why Hurley Can't Improve Star Wars

2011-11-05T11:44:00.000+08:00

Hugo (Hurley) Reyes tries to put time travel to a useful purpose in the later part of the LOST saga by...if you don't already know could you guess?

Hugo is caught scribbling in a notebook while asking off-beat questions like, "How do you spell 'bounty hunter' ?" His exasperated companion grabs the book and begins reading a synopsis of the plotline of Star Wars. Hugo explains that he is going to take advantage of his journey back to the 1970's by sending George Lucas suggestions on improving the plot. This, if I remember rightly, provokes a response of the style "Are you crazy??" This is what makes Hugo such a loveable guy; he's not interested in acquiring power; he just wants to improve Star Wars. This is unfortunate because his altruism is doomed. There are two flaws in trying to improve Lucas' work:

1. If it happened, a separate timeline would split off and Hugo wouldn't know about it because his history and memory of it would be stuck in his timeline. Otherwise, he couldn't remember Star Wars with the deficiencies.

2. Star Wars is beyond saving.

It is the most heinous piece of trite, plagiarised space in this galaxy or any other. The special effects were enough to boost it in 1977 when the series first appeared. That was then. Once the novelty wore off it was obviously a fraud upon the science-fiction fan base. I have suspected for a long time that Lucas actually despises the SF community and is deliberately offering dross in the same manner as a couple of mythical tailors once made a king clothes from moonbeams.

Post#179 Stephen Smith Isn't The Messiah, Either.

2011-10-17T19:49:00.001+08:00

The latest rumour from the insiders is that the seekers after a leader for the Labor Party are looking to advance Steve Smith as a foil to Kevin Rudd. I've been casting my vote for Steve in federal elections since 1993 and, although I haven't always given him first preference I have never seriously considered putting him last.

That's not going to be the pattern forever and it will change around about the time of the next election. Two things have led to this; exasperation with the Greens and a recognition that Steve and I have developed some irreconcilable differences.

The Greens have proven, to my disgust, that the Coalition had them correctly pegged as ill-judged wreckers. Bob Brown has shown that, when given real power, he can't deal with the tough questions and obligations that come with it. His attacks on News Ltd are perfect proof of this. He has ample opportunity to expose flaws in their arguments, if there are flaws. Resorting to polemical slogans is not proving anything. Failing to answer practical questions from journalists who are prepared to give him a fair hearing is a final proof that he's out of his depth. One example: Why can't he explain his position on the coal industry? Efforts to obtain an explanation as to how the industry is to be wound down without catastrophe to the Australian economy meet with relentless evasion. Bob seems to be taking refuge in Micawberism, believing that something will turn up, even if he can't remotely guess what it might be. That doesn't give cause for faith in the Greens' pet project, the carbon tax. I never have believed in it and nothing coming from Bob's crew is likely to change that. Green preferences got Steve Smith over the line in the last election and they'll be the second-last on my list of preferences. A vote for the Greens is a vote for Steve. More importantly, a vote for Steve (or any Labor candidate) is a vote for the Greens.

Steve hasn't lost my support by personally doing anything too unconventional. In fact it's his adherence to the conventional that has done it; loyalty to Cabinet decisions (no matter how foolish), keeping up the tradition of sycophancy to Israel, persisting with the folly of Australian-built submarines when it's obvious that we can't build or design them worth a damn. His defence of Carmen Lawrence doesn't recommend him to me either. I think he's had a very fair go - eighteen years worth. He hasn't demonstrated any great initiative or insight in that time and is definitely a follower, not a leader. He probably won't mind losing my vote and I wouldn't enjoy seeing a Liberal take his place, but enough is enough.

Post#178 Malaysia's No Solution

2011-09-25T16:45:00.000+08:00

PRESS RELEASE: IMMEDIATE PUBLICATION: 25/09/2011

ANNOUNCEMENT ON ASYLUM SEEKER ARRANGEMENTS

FROM THE OFFICE OF THE SPECIAL AUSTRALIAN NEGOTIATOR FOR MIGRATION

I'm pleased to announce that I have developed a solution to the asylum seeker challenge facing the Commonwealth of Australia: The Government of the Pacific Kingdom of Kamaria has agreed to receive as many asylum seekers* as Australia can send them, to cover all costs involved and to indemnify Australia with respect to all obligations under international law. The agreement is to persist in perpetuity. I shall be visiting Kamaria on Tuesday, 27 September 2011, to sign the agreement as Australia's special ambassador plenipotentiary for migration matters. The agreement will take immediate effect upon signing.

(* Clarification: This should not be understood to mean Australians seeking asylum.)

This marks a new phase in Australia's relations with Kamaria and both governments have expressed the hope that this generous act by Kamaria will lead to a permanent supersedence of the occasional hostilities which have characterised past dealings between the nations. The -

What's your objection? "Kamaria's a fictional place" ? ... Okay, it is... Alright, smart-alec; there's no agreement either. Obviously.

However, I offer the following apologia: The foregoing non-solution is no less effective than any policy pursued to date by the current government of Australia. In fact, it's superior to the East Timor non-solution, the Papua-New Guinea non-solution and the Malaysia non-solution in that the announcement above won't offend the government of any real nation through being presumptive upon their sovereignty. So there.

Why do I list Malaysia among the sites of non-solutions? It's nothing to do with the most obvious flaws, such as the limited number involved or the spanner put in the works by the High Court. The text of the Malaysia Agreement is recommended reading for the purposes of this post. It's quite brief and clear as inter-governmental agreements go. If you can't be bothered, you can take my word for the following: The essence of the agreement is that the Malaysian government has agreed to receive 800 asylum seekers over four years from Australia in return for sending four thousand to Australia from their ample reservoir. Here's the catch which I've spotted and which Julia and Co. haven't: Once. The Malaysians have agreed to receive them once. Not twice, thrice, fource, fivece or any other 'ce. Just lonely little once. I don't mean that the agreement is a one-off limited to 800. That could be supplemented by further agreements to take more. I mean that each person transferred to Malaysia is being offered certain protections, by Malaysia, once. Malaysia agrees to not coercively deport them to a place where they will be in danger and to consult Australia about the disposition of any person subject to the agreement who becomes intolerable to Malaysia for reasons such as security threat or criminality. What is missing from the agreement is a permit to Australia to treat them as repatriatable deportees with respect to Malaysia.

This isn't a peripheral quibble. The 4000 coming Australia's way are not remotely likely to attempt to abscond to Malaysia. They can be assumed to want to be transferred. By Julia's own definition, the 800 going the other way are being used for aversion therapy. They are being sent where they don't want to go. This is meant to deter others from following in their wake to Christmas Island. Malaysia doesn't want them to go to Malaysia either. They are only taking them in order to rid themselves of the 4000. It is a major omission in logic to not consider what the Forbidden 800 will do in Malaysia. It is highly probable that they won't abandon their desire to travel to Australia and, although Malaysia may have agreed to not deport them, they haven't agreed to detain them against their will either. It should be a lot cheaper to arrange a voyage to Australia from Malaysia, via Indonesia, than to travel from Arabia, Central Asia or even Sri Lanka. As they will be legally residing in Malaysia they will be able to openly transact business, such as receiving funds by wire from associates in Australia or elsewhere. If permitted to work they will have another way of funding the journey.

If they succeed in scraping together the money and return to Australian waters, they will probably be identifiable by fingerprints or some other means as members of the transferred group. Then the Australian government will say: "You are part of the Forbidden 800! Back to Malaysia you go!" The wheels will fall off this idea when the Malaysian government interjects, "Oh, if they don't wish to accept the hospitality of the Malaysian people, we can't force it upon them. That would be an abuse of their human rights." The Australian stipulation, "You agreed to take them" will, naturally, provoke the response, "We agreed and we did take them. We didn't agree to imprison them. In fact you insisted that we should treat them leniently. We'll be reasonable. We'll take back any of them that wish to return." Ha, ha, ha.

I was very impressed by a letter to The Australian in which the author recounted being told by a Malaysian businessman, "I love to do business with Australians!" When asked why, he explained, "Because they are so gullible."

Post#177 Vive le Carbone!!! And Death to the Carbon Tax!!!

2011-08-20T17:18:00.000+08:00

The craic is that the Australian Labor Party is gone for all money at the next Australian Federal Election. The carbon tax is the main drag anchor on the ALP's chances and is the most obvious of the self-inflicted wounds they're carrying. The decision to call an early election in 2010 and the various follies of their first term had already reduced the ALP to reliance upon a trio of independent members. Messrs Oakeshott, Wilkie and Windsor have been able to wring some results from the ALP for their personal causes but it seems implausible that any of them would die in a ditch for the carbon tax. Like the Greens, they really have nowhere else to go. Their bridges are all now thoroughly burnt with the Coalition. That's what puzzles me most about the course of this government. It's obvious that the kudos of global warming as a matter of public importance has slipped. Whatever the truth of the matter, it's blown out as a political motivator.

Any community has a limited capacity to stay fired up about anything and the height of public hysteria about an issue is the immediate prelude to a cooling-off. This would probably differ if the issue was an enormous asteroid on a course to imminent collision with the Earth, but when it's a slow-burner in the background, people adjust to live with it. The importance of an issue is not in contention, it's simply that anything other than an adrenalin-provoking terror loses its force. AIDS is a good example of this. It's just as lethal as it always was but has faded into the background. You could scan quite a lot of media without ever noticing its existence. Global warming is now also a mature crisis and has had its glory days. Anyone attempting to persuade people to take pain to deal with it is going to have to make a damn good case. The ALP has done nothing of the kind. The decision to adopt the carbon tax has been made without the legwork necessary to demonstrate any merit.

There's a simple test for this policy which I've proposed before:

First: Demonstrate that it's possible to disconnect ourselves from the carbon fuels that we rely upon and how.

Second: Work out a fair time to allow for conversion to the new energy source/s.

Finally, ask why we need a tax to achieve it. The answer will always be that if the first two can be done, the answer to this question is that we don't.

If the answer to the first question is that it isn't technologically feasible, no amount of taxing will make it happen.

I recently wrote "Return to Sender" on the government's carbon tax propaganda pamphlet and posted it back to them. Apparently many others are doing the same. Someone else applied a traditional recycling technique as shown in the photograph below:

From http://saynocarbontaxaustralia.blogspot.com/

The ALP deserves the odium they've incurred. They'll deserve the kick when they get it.

Post#176 AmyOops: 10 Ways to Know it was great

2011-07-14T17:48:00.001+08:00

AmyOops: 10 Ways to Know it was great

Post#175 Excerpt from "Nattitude!" a blog I follow, by Natalie Black: "Today I wish"

2011-07-10T16:45:00.000+08:00

Here's an excerpt from Nattitude a blog I follow, by Natalie Black. It's a real delight. (Except Nat didn't pass the written exam for the US Foreign Service.)

Today I wish

I wish I would hurry and hear back from the foreign service about whether or not I'm invited to take the oral assessment

I wish I could go to lunch with my old work friends Mark and Jake

I wish I could love my job

I wish my job was to read books for pleasure

I wish Mao Zedong had never been born

I wish I could go to an island somewhere for six months and do nothing but drink virgin pina coladas and blog (okay, as long as I'm wishing...do they have to be virgin?)

I wish I had no debt, a nice car, central air, new furniture and a remodeled kitchen

I wish my boss had approved my expense reports two weeks ago so I'd have more than one dollar left in my bank account

I wish it wasn't so hard to do the little things, for example my before-bed routine like floss my teeth and say my prayers

I wish the lady at the nail salon hadn't butchered my nails back in February, and I wish they'd grow out faster

I wish this damn wart on my middle finger would go away, I wish liquid nitrogen didn't burn so bad, I wish once was enough

I wish I could be skinny and still eat as much sugar and caffeine as I wanted

I wish I didn't have to buy three new pairs of size-12 pants when I have about 15 pairs of size-8 pants sitting in my closet gathering dust

I wish Marie was coming this weekend instead of next

I wish it would be warm and sunny every day

I wish there was no such thing as a slumdog, or I wish they could all win "Who Wants to Be a Mill-un-aire" and live happily ever after in love

I wish I didn't still wish...

Post#174 Uncivil Obedience - The Sycophant in the Ointment

2011-06-30T19:32:00.000+08:00

Sycophant:

A person who behaves obsequiously in order to gain advantage.

Derivation: Mid 16th century (denoting an informer): from French sycophante, or via Latin from Greek sukophantēs 'informer', from sukon 'fig' + phainein 'to show', perhaps with reference to making the insulting gesture of the ‘fig’ (sticking the thumb between two fingers) to informers.

There's a trend I see in every part of life where groups are organised: It's the growth of a system of patronage and the fawning that goes with it. Destructive obsequiousness is lurking in every moment and every place. Here's one example: A while back the West Australian published in its Inside Cover section the story of a missing EPIRB from an Australian naval vessel. It had fallen from a ship's boat and provoked a major search in the waters off Perth. Although the search was high-profile, the revelation that it was all a false alarm due to some negligence by a naval rating was suppressed until a civilian who'd heard about it on marine radio asked Inside Cover why the outcome hadn't been published. IS published the "secret" without revealing the source. This provoked a witch-hunt in the Navy and Defence Department as various catchfarts tried frantically to appease their bosses by finding what they believed was a leaker. More and more time and effort was wasted until a real whistleblower called IS and begged them to take the heat off. IS published the obvious fact that the operation and its outcome had been broadcast on open frequency at the time and no leaking was necessary. They also asked why, if the public was allowed to know of the search, they weren't allowed to know the true cause. This is indicative of a typical quality of the crawler: stupidity.

It's not as though power hasn't done everything it can to discourage those who want to tell it the truth. The story of the sailor hanged for warning the Admiral of impending doom may be apocryphal, but the pattern is present in history. Not for nothing was the phrase "killing the messenger" added to the list of classic cliches. In the Soviet Union of blessed memory the intelligence agencies were obliged to provide Brezhnev with reports which conformed to his expectation of Western conspiracies. Failing to do so would have been seen as suspect. The realistic assessor would risk condemnation as an appeaser or traitor.

Here's a couple of anecdotes from my own observation and experience:

Once, in an organisation where I was conducting an audit, I discovered a serious misprint in a contract form which, through a simple transposition of words nullified the effect of the document as a protection of the organisation's interests. I was finally able to convince the person in charge of publications of the obvious, but met a final obstacle. Although convinced of the error, this character wouldn't alter the printing template, insisting that an instruction had to come from the responsible area. I responded by asking whether the proper authorisation to make a cock-up had been received. When I was finally able to nail that point home I asked the simple question: If you made the mistake without permission, why do you need permission to fix it? To no avail; the habit of refraining from use of common sense or guts was too deeply ingrained. I gave up in disgust and left the fools to their devices. I didn't have the energy to pursue it with some mug who would have simply referred the matter endlessly upwards until the CEO referred me back to publications. Another characteristic of the crawler: they prevent the correction of mistakes.

A person of my acqaintance who had been employed as an administrative assistant in a local government district was instructed by the supervisor in the manners of the office. One of the rules was to not make eye contact with the councillors if they happened to be wandering the building and walked past. This was to avoid the disrepect involved in engaging them in acknowledging the staff with a nod or a "G'day". The crawler creates neurosis and paranoia.

In a Federal law enforcement agency, I once had to organise the taking of minutes of a meeting where some senior managers were in attendance. A major obstacle arose when the minute-takers couldn't figure how many "r's" were in one man's surname. I resolved the protracted argument by approaching the guy and asking him. This was considered highly unconventional and bold and added to my mana as a lateral thinker. This sort of reckless use of common sense led to my horrifying another gang of fleas by asking a senior manager at another meeting for his name for the minutes. On this occasion I was visiting another city and the fleas nearly fell off their chairs at my temerity. I asked them why they would expect a person from out of town to guess the name of a complete stranger. Utter bafflement. Apparently some enormously obscure operation carried out by subterfuge was the proper practice to find out such things. The crawler wastes everybody else's time and effort.

The crawler prospers because those who should know better and should resist the corrosion of their domain by fawners encourage them. The love of obedience and deference by the "leaders" is at least as much to blame as the inclinations to servility by their followers. The essence of it is that the sycophant is no-one's friend. Their sole focus is on their own interest. That's hard for the powerful to remember, but it's vital; the person who relentlessly agrees is not loyal to you or your cause. They're willing to let you run on the rocks rather than risk the cost of correcting your course.

Post#173 Vandalia Dianella - Land of the Wreckers

2011-05-11T17:24:00.001+08:00

At the Dianella Plaza bus stop on Alexander Drive there has been an epic struggle fought between the diligent destroyers of public amenities and the agents and servants of the Stirling City Council and SignAds. It may be concluded that the vandals have won a partial victory. The Council have replaced the multiply-smashed glass panels along the length of the bus shelter with a metal grill with small apertures. This can be understood as a process of natural selection whereby the stimulating entities (vandals) have persuaded the authorities to evolve their amenity in the direction of higher durability. The glass-encased illuminated advertising at one end of the shelter and the plain glass panel at the opposite end remain. The advertising panel currently bears the display shown in the photographs below:

I took them from various angles to get a good view of the whole image. I reckon the chance of this sign making any difference to the behaviour of the wreckers is nil. It does have some merit as an artistic concept. It now only remains to see whether the vandals will smash the glass covering it to make a piece of the combination performance/installation type.

Post#172 The Death of bin Laden

2011-05-02T19:54:00.000+08:00

Osama bin Laden

In his World War II alternate history series, The Axis of Time, John Birmingham refers to a fictional work of art hanging on the bulkhead wall in a naval vessel of the future which has travelled in time to the 1940's. It is called 'The Death of bin Laden'. Now that work is capable of being realised. Life has imitated art in a manner most pleasing to those of us in what, inexplicably is called 'The West'.

George Bush and John Howard have been dusted off and invited to crow over the carcass and, such was my good humour, I couldn't cavil at a word that either of them said.

Here is the (revised) list:

1. ~~bin Laden~~

2. Zawahiri

3. Mullah Omar

We're getting there. May he lick his left hand in hell forever.

Post#171 Wolf Hall - The Time-Travelling Imagination

2011-05-02T19:42:00.000+08:00

Today I read the last page of Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel and thought, "It certainly improved as it proceeded" and "That finale only works if it's used in a case where one has to think about it." In the last sentence of the book, Thomas Cromwell schedules a visit for Henry VIII to the seat of the Seymour family, Wolf Hall, which will be the beginning of his own undoing. First will come the King's love affair with Jane Seymour, then the execution of Anne Boleyn and, following the death of Jane, the failed marriage to Anne of Cleves and Cromwell's death. It's a crafty conceit in the context of the somewhat unfamiliar, but it would be pretty lame if you tried it with a story ending: "All is proceeding well; our troubles seem behind us now. Tomorrow we shall sail for New York. We have been fortunate enough to secure berths on the new vessel, RMS Titanic."

Apart from that quibble, Wolf Hall is a very engaging yarn. The best type of historical fiction is that in which one begins to lose track of the fact that it is told in a voice which, although it may be buttressed by diligent research, is a figment. Critics have said that Mantel has provided a more sympathetic view of Cromwell than the familiar histories. I think this is because the part of his life which is treated of is not as difficult to come to terms with as that which follows. The persecutions and executions ramp up after the Boleyn marriage.

There is a scope in the further reaches of the past to mould the personality of the imagined historical figure into a form pleasing to the author. Is there a harm in this? Yes, if evildoers are presented as virtuous and the virtuous as evil. But we'll never know will we?

Post#170 Women Astronauts

2011-04-18T19:08:00.000+08:00

Crater 308 viewed from orbit

Now, imagine this:
July 20, 1969

The Lunar Excursion Module Eagle is approaching the intended first landing site in the Sea of Tranquility.

The lander is off course due to a computer guidance error. Unless the pilot can manually correct course they'll hit a large boulder in a crater near the intended landing site.

At the controls of the LEM are, of course, two astronauts. But wait! These aren't Neil and Buzz! This is amazing!! Two women are crewing the lander. Will they succeed in averting disaster or dissolve into wreckage on the lunar surface?

This was the real problem facing Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin. The seasoned test-pilot, Armstrong, met the challenge and landed the LEM safely about six and a half kilometres from the crater. Could a female team have succeeded? This was the crucial question in the debate about admitting women to the astronaut training programme. NASA insisted that its first crews must be qualified as test-pilots and possess the sort of credentials in the field which could only be obtained through the military. There were, of course, no female military test-pilots in the late 1950s when the US space programme began. The debate itself was provoked by an accidental circumstance that had no official intention behind it. Dr William Randolph Lovelace II was the director of the clinic which had provided medical testing services to NASA and had supervised the assessment of the Mercury astronauts. His scientific curiosity led him to investigate the performance of women in the same testing regime.

This prompted a few of them to believe that there was a serious chance of them joining the programme. Geraldyn ("Jerrie") Cobb was the most active and engaged in a public campaign to press NASA to accept her and others of the group for training. This led to a sad and futile struggle as NASA and the USAF disowned the idea. A Congressional hearing affirmed NASA's policy but Cobb never gave up the idea, even into old age. This article gives the essence of the story.

The myth persists that a team of female atronauts had been "good to go" and were shafted by the androcracy. This pops up in various conspiracy-theory communities and among less-informed feminist commentators. There are some very detailed texts available on the subject and I recommend:

Promised the Moon: The Untold Story of the First Women in the Space Race
by Stephanie Nolen
Published by Penguin 2002

The MERCURY 13
by Martha Ackmann
Published by Random House
2004

Here's a comment by a son of one of the test subjects from the Wired Science site:

My Mom, Gene Nora Jessen (nee Stumbough) is probably delighted that this meme won’t die, but yes, this story has become encrusted with a lot of myth. When people send her fan letters in Idaho extolling her for taking part in a “secret astronaut training program” she writes back to correct them, nicely but firmly, and signs her letter “Yours for accurate history”.

Yes, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and she quit her job as a flight instructor to go take the tests (they wouldn’t let her take time off!), but she never had any illusions about what she was getting into. This was just a research program, not a ticket into space. The whole group by no means agrees on this point. Ask a different woman and you’ll get a different answer.

Incidentally the sobriquet “Mercury 13” was created by a documentarian named James Cross, a goofy guy with a feminist bent and an abiding interest in aeronautics who dug up this story in the 1990s and called Mom out of the blue to see if it was really her. Yes, the phrase “Mercury 13” is your basic Hollywood Lie, but it’s catchy and we have Jim to thank for resuscitating this story and giving it a catchy name. When he arranged for all the surviving members to meet at the 99s [international women pilots org] museum in Oklahoma City in Spring 1994 to sit for interviews, it was the first time they’d all met each other. When they originally took the tests in the 1960s, Lovelace sequestered them in pairs in a local motel – which didn’t encourage them to form much of a group identity, but did at least give them all someone sympathetic to talk to at the end of a hard day of getting yet another goddamn enema.

If anyone wants to contact Gene Nora (which by the way is pronounced as one word with the accent in the middle: jaNOra), I’m sure she’d be happy to hear from you. I won’t include her email here - if you’re motivated you can probably Google it in under a minute. But before you make contact, it’d be best to do your homework. At least four books have been written on the subject (Right Stuff Wrong Sex by Weitekamp, The Mercury 13 by Ackmann/Sherr, Promised the Moon by Nolen, and Amelia Earhart’s Daughters by Haynsworth/Toomey) and they’re all generally pretty sober and comprehensive affairs, which is handy, because this story really is insanely stupidly gobsmackingly complicated.

Taylor Jessen
Burbank

The impetus to believe in the stymied project is, I believe, a product of a kind of sexual romanticism. It can be found in the fictional realm in the person of characters such as Lara Croft, Brenda Starr, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and other such figures of fancy. At least, that's what appeals to the male imagination. The attraction for women who desire to see female pioneering is a natural-enough desire to wipe away the remnants of the suffocating and often idiotic restraints to which women were subjected in the past.

Sally Ride and the other US women astronauts who followed her may have benefited from the stirring of the pot which the Mercury 13 agitators produced. Their challenge to what John Glenn described as the "social order" may have broken the sled runners free of the ice. One of the byproducts of the situation was the inspiration of Jane Hart and others to become active in feminist politics and to contribute to the founding of the National Organisation for Women.

Eileen Collins - First woman to command a US spacecraft

And, when the struggle was won...

The first woman to command a US spacecraft, Eileen Collins, said that a spaceflight was a wonderful experience but that she wouldn't want anyone to despair for lack of it.

Post#170 Advance Australia Fair

2011-02-10T16:30:00.003+08:00

I read an interview recently with Thomas Keneally in one of my history periodicals. The author of the Booker Prize-winning Schindler’s Ark, the basis for Stephen Spielberg’s movie Schindler’s List, last year he published Australians: Origins to Eureka, volume one of a history of his native land. I’ve not read this –yet – so I can’t comment, though I was beguiled and intrigued by some of the points he made in the discussion.

A lot of people in England have silly preconceptions about Australia and its history. If they think of it at all it’s really just as a dumping ground for convicts, undesirables of all sorts! But as Keneally quite rightly says, many of those sentenced to transportation were condemned simply for embracing radical causes, not welcomed in an England dominated by a reactionary aristocratic clique. It was their sense of social justice, their sense of determination that allowed Australia, conceived as a penal colony, to become something much greater;

One of the reasons why Australia survives was that there were many social protestors among the convicts. These were people who did not consider themselves criminals. They were people like poachers who acted in protest against the enclosure of estates. Then there were the Luddites, Swing rioters, Irish Ribbonmen and Jacobite martyrs. You had these fairly robust, stroppy people alongside the professional thieves and prostitutes.

These people were later joined by others simply looking for a better life, those who, for one reason or another, were unable to establish themselves in the Old Country. Here for me Charles Dickens’ Wilkins Micawber springs to mind, the genial and impecunious rogue in David Copperfield, always waiting for something to turn up. Well, it did – Australia turned up! It was there that he finally made a go of things after a lifetime of failure. What I did not know is that Dickens actually sent two of his sons there, despairing of their prospects at home. Anthony Trollope sent a son there as well.

So, the land was settled by people with a sense of grievance, people for whom England offered little or nothing. This seems to me, perhaps looking at things through rosy spectacles, to account for a quality I’ve always admired in Australians – a mood of egalitarianism and an almost complete lack of the finer forms of English snobbery.

All of the elements of a new consciousness were there; it only needed one spark to allow them to coalesce. This came in 1854 with the rising at the Eureka goldfield at Ballerat by a group of miners disgruntled by prohibitive fees levied by the authorities. In itself it was nothing, a revolution quickly squashed, an episode of seemingly transitory importance. But, as Keneally argues, it had an extraordinary impact in the long-term, beginning a process that helped turn an old penal colony into a modern democracy, the final harvesting of the progressive tradition.

So far a very positive story, but the writer finishes on a note of caution;

As a settler society Australia 1788-1860 was prodigiously successful. I don’t say this with a jingoistic glow in my cheeks because I don’t think I can say the same about the past 50 years, and ultimately I’m going to have to write about that period as well.

Alas, nowhere is perfect; not even Australia. :-)

Post#169 Faggots

2011-02-07T19:52:00.000+08:00

On September 8th, 2010, this was broadcast on Channel 10 television, Australia:

The background to this was that Stephanie Rice had Tweeted the message: "Suck on that you faggots!" (directed to the South African rugby team after an Australian victory). She was leaped upon with ferocity by the PC Brigade and a sponsorship by Jaguar Motors was withdrawn.

A couple of days ago I read of the attack by Ruby Thomas and two companions on a 62-year old man in Trafalgar square.

Ruby Thomas (Image from http://www.expressandstar.com/)

Here's a quote from the article at the Guardian site:

"Thomas had been acting in a "lairy, mouthy way" and flirting with passersby before she turned on Baynham and his friend Philip Brown and screamed "fucking faggots" at them as they crossed the square.

She also smiled as she "put the boot into" an unconscious Baynham after Alexander [male co-offender] had knocked him to the ground and caused a severe brain injury.

Baynham died 18 days later at the Royal London hospital without recovering consciousness. Police found his blood on Thomas's handbag and the ballet pumps she had been wearing."

She was penalised with seven years in prison.

This incident occurred in september of 2009 and predates Rice's Tweet by a year. I thought the response to Rice was cretinous and typical of the manufactured scandals that attend and imperil celebrity. After reading about the use of the term in the context of kicking a man to death I revised my opinion somewhat. I'm sure Stephanie spoke without true malice, but if this word is taken by some as encouragement to commit murder by endorsing bigotry, I can live without it.

Post#168 Death to Television

2011-01-30T16:54:00.000+08:00

Here are some comments from a post by Anastasia on Ana the Imp about censorship. I was prompted to suggest that the entire concept of broadcast television should have been deleted:

/// Retarius said...

...how bad does something have to be before it's a genuine threat? And how relentlessly insightful do you need to be to recognise it?

In the 1950's there was actually a debate in Australia about whether television broadcasting should be allowed. I think, on balance, that we'd be better off if the opposers had won. That's something I wouldn't have expected to write in earnest 30 years ago. Now it seems the most natural and sensible conclusion to come to.

15 December 20:10 01:15

Anastasia Fitzgerald-Beaumont said...

Retarius, all television? That seems a bit drastic. Mind you the idea of being spared Simon Cowal and Gordon Ramsay has a certain appeal. :-)

15 december 2010 15:24

Retarius said...

Yes, all. An interesting indicator of the state of affairs in a home is to locate the television/s and see how the rest of the furniture is arranged with respect to it/them. There's something pathetic in a room where the TV is the focus of the seating, like an altar in a temple.

I drove the false god out of my home about twelve years ago by deciding to not replace the last of its avatars which had infested my space. I still see some of it occasionally in other places but I've never regretted being rid of it. It has two serious evils; it is non-interactive and acts as an anchor to the viewer who is trapped by it.

16 December 2010 03:28 ///

Television means "far-seeing", a compound of Greek and Latin which provoked some controversy among philologists when first coined, because of its mixed lineage. This academic quibble is the least cause to complain of it. Here's something I wrote way back in Post#8 to this blog:

I once read an article about television in a very old bound volume of Meanjin, a venerable magazine which many Australians will know of. The edition was from the early 1950's and the article dealt with the issue of whether television should be allowed to be established as a service in Australia. I was amazed at the time of reading that anybody could have thought of stopping it. I now wonder what would have happened if a transmission of the typical fare of today could have been sent back to 1950 for the edification of the citizens. The cynical, unashamed stuff that really is broadcast. Not the placatory promises about the cultural and educational benefits of the service which accompanied its introduction; the real everynight thing. I am sure they would have been utterly repulsed and would have damned the thing to Hell. Even though I still watch some of it, I wouldn't mind if it didn't exist. The cost/benefit analysis is in. Television is a net loss.

I wouldn't change a letter of that. The television device itself is not the menace. The video screen component is adapted for use in surveillance, computer displays and video players. The essential difference is that these are devices used at the discretion of the viewer. The free-to-air broadcast which was the original and worst use of television is not free in the least. It imposes a loss of choice; requiring that the viewer make themselves available at the convenience of the broadcaster. It also contains potential for obnoxious ambushes in which something one wouldn't choose to see is snuck in during a commercial break or in the course of a programme which, while initially tolerable may take a nasty turn. If there's a child in the room these incidents can really annoy a would-be responsible adult. Yes, the home video recorder can spare this, if you're willing to engage in the manouvres required to make it work and to cope with the unreliable schedules of the networks.

The most vile effect of the contraption is the brainwashing of children into Pavlovian consumerism. In the hey-day of the Mutant Ninja Turtles in the mid-1990's I saw a woman pushing a trolley through a supermarket with a child of three or four years riding in it. He caught sight of a pizza box in a freezer with one of the critters pictured on the cover and began frantically screaming, "I want the turtle! I WANT THE TURTLE!!"
She pushed him away into the distance with his screams echoing and a dispirited expression on her face. The proper response to this was to take a sledgehammer to the television, but I imagine it didn't occur to her.

An American commentator said it in one line: "The television is the open end of a sewer which deposits its contents in your living-room."

Post#167 Jane Fonda, why didn't you know you were beautiful?

2010-12-19T16:50:00.004+08:00

Bulimia: Modern Latin, from Gk. boulimia, "ravenous hunger" as a disease, lit. "ox-hunger," from bou-, intensive prefix (originally from bous "ox") + limos "hunger;" as a psychological disorder, technically bulemia nervosa. Anglicized bulimy was used from late 14c. in a medical sense of "ravishing hunger."

I've just read Jane Fonda's autobiography, My Life So Far and it contains some of the saddest things I've ever read. Here's part of what she writes about her initiation into the wonderful world of bulimia:

"Starting my freshman year at Emma Willard, being very thin assumed dominance over good hair in the hierarchy of what really mattered...Carol Bentley...from Toledo, Ohio,entered Emma Willard and became my best friend...Carol joined me in having major body-image issues. It was she who introduced me to bingeing and purging, what we now know as bulimia. She said the idea came to her in a class on the history of the Roman Empire. She read that the Romans would gorge themselves on food during orgiastic feasts and then put their fingers down their throats to make themselves throw it all back up and start over again. The idea of being able to eat the most fattening foods and never having to pay the consequences was very appealing.

...We assumed that we were the first people since the Romans to do this; it was our secret, and it created a titillating bond between us."

She tells, in very depressing detail, of how this practice lasted into her forties and caused massive disruption to her life, including bone breakages due to malnutrition. The theme of her self-perception as worthless, inadequate, ugly and all the other woeful cliches pervades the book. No-one could have imagined any of this from the public demeanour she maintained. She says that bulimia can, unlike anorexia, be concealed and that she managed to hide it from her closest ones.

It's often said that the hands go first in the ageing process. They can also give away the secrets of a self-starver. Regard the wrists and the back of the hands as displayed in photographs taken during that time and it's possible, once you've been told the secret, to detect the signs of it.

It's was a case of horrified fascination for me to read the story of her enslavement to this futile obsession and a reminder to any man with a speck of decency to never tell any girl that she might do well to lose some weight.

Post#166 Patrick White - A Denunciation

2010-11-29T18:58:00.002+08:00

Patrick White is the only Australian to have yet won the Nobel Prize for Literature. What that says to me is that the Nobel Prize is greatly overrated. I was subjected to White's efforts at literature through the coercion of a University course in English. Fifty lashes with the cat would be a distinctly preferable ordeal. I came to the rapid conclusion that his oeuvre was a massive derivative of the principles behind the "Royal Nonesuch" as described by Mark Twain in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. If ever there was a rort upon the credulous... The style of his writing is obscure, conceited and tiresome. The subject matter is grotesque, trivial, odious. The old boy loved bodily functions and was particularly fond of constructing scenes in which anality could feature. A while ago someone made a big deal of the fact that publishers rejected unattributed samples of his works sent to them as purported efforts of novice writers. This was supposed to be a scandal and a shame. I say that it demonstrates fine judgement on the part of those editors. If only educators would see the light and spare students from him in future. In fact, if the Nazis come back and want books to burn, I'll drive the trucks to the bonfires for them - as long as they're loaded to the gunnels with the wanks - er - works of Patrick White. I denounce him as a vile, obnoxious curmudgeon and fraud.

Post#165 Jim Stagg's Dynamite Hot Chili - A Denunciation

2010-11-29T18:50:00.000+08:00

Now, to be fair, this is a matter of personal taste. I don't know what anybody else really tastes when they eat any more than I know what they see or hear. We'd have to swap bodies with each other (perhaps brain components as well). I can only go by the perceived reactions and the counted votes of others. This material is sold in Australia as a "Product of the USA" by Hormel Foods. The label contains phrases like "ignited by Habanero peppers".

I was surprised to discover that this meal in a can is utterly bland. At best I'd call it mild chili. Others who tried it agreed that the claims on the label about its savoury "heat" were laughable. I noticed that the actual chili content was a very low percentage.

It's not unpleasant or inedible. It just ain't remotely what it's said to be. Perhaps in the USA they have less tolerance for real chili. Maybe we're just being conned. Either way, if you want roaring hot chili that'll rip the roof off - don't bother with this.

I denounce it as an overhyped disappointment

Post#164 BAM - An Endorsement

2010-11-29T17:33:00.000+08:00

Bam by Reckitt Benckiser is a product which I've been seeing advertised, with the usual claims of rapid destruction of grime. I didn't take it too seriously until I helped a friend clean a residential premises from which his tenants had recently departed. He'd heard of Bam and bought some of each of the three types on sale for various tasks. I was amazed to see that the stuff actually worked! Not quite as magically as in the ads, but not with sufficient deviation to make you call the ACCC. (Wikipedia article here) (ACCC site here)

The toilet was a masterpiece of vindictive tenantry. The departed ones had given it their all, short of breaking the bowl. I figure that's on the same principle as a sniper wounding a soldier so that his comrades are burdened with him, rather than killing him outright. If there's no intact toilet bowl, the landlord can't suffer horribly as he cleans it, can he? Yellow-topped Bam thwarted the would-be tormentors' intentions. In a couple of minutes it ripped the plaque-like encrustations from the porcelain (with the help of mild scrubbing). I've had to use a lino knife and scrape fossilised shit off in similar circumstances; in cases where Domestos, Ajax, etc,. were impotent.

The Orange-topped Bam did a great job removing painted graffiti from a set of concrete slabs. These are old, porous and just about impossible to remove contaminants from with normal household products. Industrial-gauge chemicals and high-pressure spraying are usually required. With a bit of help from a scrub-brush, Orange-topped Bam removed all traces of the damage. And it's actually for bathroom and kitchen use! We didn't get around to using the Green-topped Bam so I can't comment on that.

A caveat: I shudder to think of the processes by which this stuff is made, in order to be so effective, and the environmental effects of the ingredients once they go down the gurgler. However, when you're in a tough spot and desperate measures are needed...ya can't be green all the time.

I endorse Yellow Bam and Orange Bam as genuine muck-busters that live up to the claims made by the manufacturers.

(I'm informed by Reckitt Benckiser that the Yellow -topped Bam is now in a new packaging with a white top - Wednesday, 4th June, 2008.)

Post#163 "Nazis on the Moon? Report to my Ready Room Number One!...And bring the whip and the oil."

2010-11-24T17:10:00.003+08:00

I found this by one of those interesting Google-glitches that link the most unlikely things. The Energia crew have made some brilliant Star Trek parodies which, in some ways, are more entertaining than the offerings of the franchise owners. This may prove to be quite engaging also.

Post#162 Lost Manners

2010-11-23T19:45:00.001+08:00

I've just read The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys by Doris Kearns Goodwin and discovered an interesting clue to a forgotten custom. In one of the photo sections in the book a group of men and women are shown attending a Fourth of July celebration in Concord Massachusets.

The scene is from the late 19th or early 20th Century and shows a flag being raised. The men in the photograph are bareheaded and holding their hats under their arms. The women are wearing their hats and saluting by holding the brims of their hats. It's the sort of thing people probably wouldn't pass down to their grandchildren and but for the photograph I'd never have guessed the existence of this practice. I'm pretty sure the women aren't holding their hats to prevent them blowing away..the uniformity of the gesture makes it unlikely.

This sort of discovery always delights me. It's like finding a cute seashell on the shore of history. And there are billions more out there to be seen...if we look closely.

Post#161 All The Free Speech You can Handle (Why not? Like most free things..it's worthless)

2010-11-02T19:54:00.000+08:00

We can all do without the secret police (and the Spanish Inquisition) but I've begun to wonder whether political "freedom" really exists in any community larger than a nomad camp or a very small Greek city-state.

The background noise in English-speaking countries is always the sound of the politicos telling the inhabitants about the wonderful heritage of the "Westminster system". The received wisdom is that freedom of speech, parliamentary elections and an independent judiciary make our way of life superior.

In practice, the obstacles to applying these prerogatives are formidable. The citizen who wishes to test the principles will find that the promise held out of glorious freedom is one of the better ironic jokes.

The capacity of Ministers of the Crown to ignore the community is infinite. No matter how often we tell them that we want the banks reined in they ignore us. No matter how loud the objections to public company fat-cat salaries, nothing is done. There seems to be a religion established in Western lands that has replaced the traditional theisms. It's called "reform" and it is based on the proposition that anything done to unleash greed is very good indeed. Politicians are obligated to subscribe to this cult or suffer beratement by the enthralled commentators of the right-wing media.

Well, I blaspheme against the false god Reform. I defile its sacred books; The Wealth of Nations and Atlas Shrugged. I profane its doctrines as propagated in The Australian and other News Ltd organs.

Reform (the real thing as opposed to the cult object) is change and that's all it is. The cultists believe that the word is a synonym for "improvement". Here's a simple proof to the contrary: Give me a two-kilo hammer and a Ming vase and I'll use the hammer to re-form the vase. Not many will find the result to be an improvement.

Can anyone get past the ranting of the Reformists and challenge their wreckage of the national assets? Joe Hockey has had a small go at the banks on that theme and even he can't beat the bullshit down. The fact that millions agree with him doesn't matter a damn. It's regarded as a quaint proof of the ignorance of the masses who don't know well enough to unquestioningly worship Reform.

Shit to Reform and all who adore it. I'm allowed to say that ... because it won't make a bit of difference.

Post#160 Another rant against pornography and what Sarah thought of it

2010-10-28T19:52:00.000+08:00

I was searching for something and discovered the blog The Voice of Today's Apathetic Youth which I'm now following.

I read the same article the author, Sarah, is responding to, and it says just what I felt.

Here's the post:

The latest in a grand tradition of anti-porn screeds in the mainstream media

Post#159 Memory the Mender.

2010-10-27T17:18:00.001+08:00

I was sure the white sphere that followed Patrick McGoohan around in The Prisoner was marked with an iris to make it a giant eyeball but it turned out Anastasia was right - it was just a plain white sphere.

This was the most recent occasion where I've discovered that my memory has improved or embellished an original. The usual trend with memory is that things fall out. In the case of movies, books, paintings and anything else remotely artistic I discover that the reverse occurs. My own aesthetic sense papers over the failings and produces a fine gloss on what might really be dross.

I received one of my rudest revisions when I saw a special broadcast of an episode of the Doctor Who serial Tomb of the Cybermen. It was a shocker to see the crudity of the sets, the woeful quality of the ham acting and the excruciatingly rough props. An "x-ray laser" pistol prop looked like a piece of jaggedly-sawn water pipe taped to a piece of scrap plastic which, naturally, was exactly what it was.

This was episode 2 of the serial which ends with the release of the Cyberleader from his compartment.

This was my favourite moment from the serial and it's not as badly divergent from memory as much else but it's still not great. The scene where the Cyberleader is released shows a door being opened and the Cyberleader sitting on a step inside. In my memory, which is superior, of course, the cybermen lift the hatch and place it to the side, rather than opening it on a hinge and then reach in and help the cyberleader to stand. The whole appearance is more dramatic and ritual.

Post#158 Drive to Stay Alive in New South Wales and the ACT

2010-10-03T15:24:00.004+08:00

Eastern Staters like to disparage the driving skills of Western Australians and the recent events of the election campaign prompted my memory on this subject when scenes of Eastern cities kept being shown on the screen.

Tony Abbott was nearly wiped out when visiting a patch of undeveloped land for some election stunt a few months back. His driver indicated and stopped on a major highway to turn right and a semi-trailer nearly ran him over. The owner of the trucking company later maintained that Abott's driver should have pulled off the road on the left verge and waited for the road to clear before trying the manouevre. Like who owns the road?

This sort of brutal reasoning is the norm for Eastern Australian driving. I spent three weeks in the ACT in 1989 and got a good look at it from close hand. I doubt that it's become more merciful since then. Canberra is a beautiful city which has been planned from scratch for facility of travel. Wide, well-designed roads carry the comparatively light traffic through large systems of roundabouts. Sounds good doesn't it? In fact, a drive through Canberra is like a trip through a theme park recreating the battle of the Kursk Salient. As a temporary resident I relied on the buses but, on a couple of occasions, had to resort to taxis to reach meetings on time. These taxi-drives provided a ground-level view of the maniacal behaviour of the locals. The roundabouts, which are supposed to be traffic-calmers were the worst. The approach was to simply point the vehicle into the entry-path, regardless of traffic, then accelerate like a starship approaching a jump-gate. The driver maintains a stony forward stare while depressing the horn to maximum volume. All other traffic in the roundabout does the same. Fists are shaken out windows, single and double finger gestures are made and there is a constant background of shouts of "You fuckin' wanker", "Arsehole", "Fuckwit" and other traditional Australian greetings. Exiting is the reverse; no matter what lane you are in, point the vehicle at the desired exit, indicate and depress the horn. Accelerate to maximum speed. This mayhem should produce massive carnage but they manage to dodge around each other miraculously.

In New South Wales proper I once stood on the verge of Darlinghurst Road in central Sydney and was spellbound by the impenetrable river of vehicles passing by. It looked like a volcanic lava flow of metal rather than traffic. No more than 30 centimetres separated the vehicles at front or rear bumper.

I once discussed this topic with a woman from NSW whom I met in Canberra and she said she "really enjoyed the agressive quality of driving" in NSW. I saw a sample of this agression outside the domestic terminal of Sydney airport when I was waiting with some colleagues in the law enforcement community for a vehicle to take us across the tarmac to a meeting in the Federal Police office. It was about 7:30 am and there was practically no traffic on the road. A few people sauntered over to a drop-off/pick-up stand next to the road from which vehicles collected them at intervals. I noticed and became fascinated by the behaviour of the drivers. The only things that I can compare it to are the action in the pits at Grand Prix races or the style of get-away drivers leaving the scenes of bank robberies. The cars would roar in, scream to a halt, the boarding passenger would rip open a door, hurl in their baggage, leap aboard and slam the door. The car would then blast off with massive thrashing of the engine and frantic working of the transmission with snarls of acceleration and bursts of dark smoke from the exhaust. The road was usually completely bare of other traffic and there was no competition for them. I called the attention of the others to this and they observed that it was perfectly normal in Sydney.

I also rode with a colleague in Canberra in his private car and noticed that, despite the light traffic, he accelerated towards each set of traffic lights before pulling to a hard stop at the red light. As there was no traffic worth a damn this achieved nothing in terms of advancing his progress...it was force of habit. An old school-mate of Greek ancestry once told me that the same practice applies in the old country and that he had a torrid time visiting the place because of it. He was blessed with having a cousin in the police in Athens and rode with him in his police jeep through the city on several occasions. He was obliged to put his hand over his eyes as though rubbing them because of the drag-racing to each stop-light. "Someone like me couldn't survive there", he said. At least in Athens the style may have some use.

The Eastern proponents of this style argue that the comparatively soft Western Australian approach would slow traffic to catastrophic proportions. They argue, for example, that when a light changes everyone must move forward simultaneously rather than waiting for the vehicle ahead to move. To my enquiry "What if a vehicle stalls or has broken down?" they respond with a perplexed stare.

Since I began composing this post the following has happened and this. There is a simple and eternal truth in this matter: Impact force equals mass multiplied by velocity. The faster you go, the harder you hit. That is my answer to those who find the WA driving style too timid for their taste.

Post # 157 Heil Big Brother!

2010-08-20T07:18:00.003+08:00

There they are, all wearing black shirts, all raising their right arms in stiff salute, all shouting ‘Sieg Heil’, all praising Adolf Hitler and his commitment to ethnic purity. Where are we exactly – in the back streets of Munich or Berlin, or any other place in the west where unregenerate extremism continues to exercise its baleful fascination? No, as a matter of fact this is Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia.

Yes, indeed, there is a Nazi movement in Mongolia, including a group which goes by the name of Tsagaan Khass – White Swastika -, led by a man who calls himself, wait for it, Big Brother. Please stop laughing; it’s all true! Big Brother has a rather confused view when it comes to Hitler, which involves some bizarre cherry-picking;

We don’t agree with his extremism and starting the Second World War. We are against all those killings, but we support his ideology. We support nationalism rather than fascism.

What Big Brother fails to mention is that in Hitler’s racial pyramid the Mongolians came close to the bottom. It’s such a bizarre irony that Nazism is now embraced by at least some among the ‘degenerate horde’ as a positive ideology.

There is really no great surprise in this. Racist nationalism is often adopted by people with a deep sense of personal grievance or inferiority, people who excuse their own failings by scapegoating some minority or other. In Germany it was the Jews. I confess I don’t know an awful lot about Mongolia but I’m guessing that Jewish people are something of a rarity. No, it’s not the Jews that Big Brother and his kind are getting upset about – it’s the Chinese, or the Chinks, their term, not mine.

China is imperialistic and evil, the message goes out; the Chinese are a danger to the ‘pure blood’ of Mongolia. Just how is this danger manifested, you may wonder? Well, you see, the Chinese have a lot of money, allowing them to come and ‘take’ Mongolian women.

This fear of deracination is not simply the fantasy of a fringe; it feeds on wider prejudices among the nation. One of the most popular urban myths in Ulan Bator is that the Chinese government has a secret policy of encouraging its male citizens to come and have sex with Mongolian women. A popular hip-hop track regularly played the capital’s bars and clubs is called Don’t Go Too Far, You Chinks, with a chorus of “shoot, shoot them all.”

There have been attacks on some foreigners, something that the US State Department has warned potential visitors about, though those in most immediate risk from this xenophobia seem to be Mongolian women themselves, threatened with head shaving if they sleep with foreigners. Tsgaaan Khass takes an altogether moderate approach here, insisting that its role is simply one of “law enforcement.” Their policy is to carry out targeted checks, going to hotels and restaurants to make sure that Mongolian girls are not involved in prostitution and foreigners are not breaking the law.

We don’t go through and beat the shit out of everyone. We check our information and make sure its right.

Now that’s a reassurance, I feel sure you will agree.

Post#156 A Guide to Australian Election Terminology (Part 2)

2010-08-13T17:19:00.001+08:00

Here's a few more terms. These are more in the colloquial strain.

1. Stooge: Natural person or other entity secretly acting on behalf of another candidate.

2. Stooge Party: Usually has a misleading name and is intended to draw votes away from a rival and funnel those votes via preference distribution to its masters in the main party. An example would be a party with a name such as "Forest Defence Party" which is actually owned by the lumber industry. It would pull votes from the genuine Green Party and transfer them via preferences to the Liberal or National Party. A "Small Business Advance Party" could, conversely, stooge for the Labor Party, drawing votes from the Liberals.

3. Stooge Candidate: represents the stooge party or runs as a bogus independent. Usually has their candidate's deposit paid by the sponsoring party.

Stooging has been subjected to various attempts at curtailment. The requirement for parties to have 500 members to qualify for putting their name on the ballot paper has made the practice less common. The other trick of having a stooge candidate change their name by deed poll to something sloganish (E.g. Mr John Savetheforests) has been thwarted by requiring natal names or chosen names used for a significant period to be shown on the candidate's application. Stooges now try to raise their profiles by false-friending real candidates and slipstreaming their publicity.

Post#155 Is Stephen Smith in Trouble in Perth?

2010-08-07T09:41:00.004+08:00

I think Steve Smith is in trouble. Steve ran for the federal district of Perth for the first time in 1993 in the famous "GST referendum" campaign. The Coalition tried to smear him with being a "mate of Paul Keating" but it didn't strike any sparks for them. In the subsequent polls of 1996, 1998, 2001, 2004 and 2007 the Coalition didn't run dead against Steve - they didn't make that much effort. As an elector in the District of Perth I only discovered the name of the Liberal candidate in each of these polls when I read it on the ballot paper at the polling station - just before putting them last. This time I know their candidate's name and face; Joe Ferrante has been given enough support to develop more recognition than any of his predecessors. His resume indicates that he has a broad repertoire which may appeal to the small business operators in the district and to those involved in community activities.

Steve has a problem which is receiving little airplay at the moment. He was unfortunate in holding the portfolio of Foreign Affairs when Israel did its Dubai stunt. He was required to stick up for the national honour in response to the faking of Australian passports and stealing of our citizens' identities to provide cover for a covert operation to commit murder in a third country. This act was perpetrated by Mossad despite a guarantee being given that such actions would not be carried out using Australian documents. This doesn't seem to make much difference to the Zionists in his district. When I was browsing the bagels at the local kosher supermarket I struck up a conversation with the staff about the coming poll and discovered that Steve is apparently on the nose with the local Jewish community.

I'd suspected the possibility but it's pretty harsh; the government's response was the bare minimum of diplomatic gesturing. Essentially, the Mossad were obliged to swap their local chief with one from another country. That's what expelling the guy boils down to. He could shake hands with his replacement at the airport on the way out. This quote from The Australian is also significant:

"The Australian government has described Israel's action as deplorable and called for a full investigation. Although this is commendable, the Australian people should demand Australia reassess its close ties with Israel. On the day the government sent ASIO officers to Israel to investigate the passport forging affair, Australia signed a $250 million arms deal with Israel. This speaks volumes on the real relationship with Israel."

Steve's constituency contains the largest community of practising Jews outside Melbourne. Most of them are uncompromising Zionists and the supermarket crew are not a minority. My subsequent enquiries to over a dozen acquaintances in the Jewish community indicate that even the feebleness of the government's response won't placate their resentment of any slight to Israel. Everyone had stories of the impact on the opinions of their family and friends of this issue. The general tone is that they're going to send Steve a message. It will also be a message to all MP's on this topic. If Steve wants to save his - salt beef - he needs to start pleading his case hard in this group...there are enough votes there to tip him out.

Post# 154 A Guide to Australian Election Terminology (Part 1)

2010-07-19T19:38:00.005+08:00

Here are some terms and explanations to enlighten the curious foreigner during the coming Australian Federal Election:

1. Polling Day: Always a Saturday and the polling stations are open from 8am to 6pm.

2. How-to-vote cards: Doesn't really tell you how to vote but attempts to tell you for whom you should vote
- handed out by scrutineers outside the polling station.

3. Scrutineer: Agent of political party who distributes how-to-vote cards for their party and
monitors activity at polling stations to prevent the other mob(s) cheating.

4. Candidate: Aspirant for political office. Described (by someone I can't remember the name of ) as coming from the ranks of the ambitious, the lonely or the mentally unsound.

5. Voting system: Preferential. Each candidate must have a unique number written next to their name. Omitting a candidate invalidates the vote. So does repeating a number or using numbers that aren't consecutive between one and the total number of candidates listed on the paper. As for how preferences are distributed - see the AEC's website.

6. Ballot Paper: Small piece of paper for the House of Representatives - increasingly wide for the Senate. The number of candidates for each of the House seats has been quite stable. Aspirants for the Senate have proliferated in the past 20 years. The Senate paper allows party-ticket voting by marking a single box or the option of full distribution of preferences by the voter. I'm one of the few battling on with the full monty fill-in. The one-box option means your preferences are allocated according to instructions given by the party to the AEC. Finding out what that is has become progressively harder as the AEC no longer list them on their website. You have to visit their office and read the damn things on a noticeboard. I like to know exactly where mine are going and I also enjoy personally putting the Liberals last.

Post #153 A Tale of a Succubus

2010-07-15T07:46:00.003+08:00

As promised, Retarius, here is one of my favourite witch songs by my favourite witchy band. Yes, it’s a tale of a succubus. :-)

Post# 152 Recherche du Tunnel Perdu

2010-07-13T19:53:00.007+08:00

Above is the concept drawing for the Time Tunnel set which I found at the Drex Files blog.

And here's the "real" thing!

Time Tunnel was a regular repeat in the children's viewing time on Channel 9 in Perth in the 1970's and early 80's. I got to know the episodes so well that I could recite lines before the actors. Although there was no Internet and no easy way of finding out the fate of defunct TV shows it was obvious that Tunnel had enjoyed an exciting but brief life. It turns out that only one season of thirty episodes was made. Like the Robinsons of Lost in Space the two time-travellers were left in limbo by the cruelty of the network suits.

I never got around to taking an adolescent interest in Lee Meriwether but that white lab coat concealed a charming lady.

There's a selection of photos of her at the blog E TENEBRIS IN LUCEM.

Oh, these two guys were in it as well...James Darren and Robert Colbert.

The Tunnel was premised on a rather dreary proposition; that all actions taken by the protagonists were accounted for in the "present". This tends to take the dramatic tension away somewhat. A couple of episodes featured villains who crossed their own paths, one being a treacherous crewman of a Mars mission who doesn't forsee his own death while visiting the Time Tunnel. Another is an Eastern European scientist who has already met the intrepid duo while trying to build his own Time Tunnel in the Soviet Union in 1956. He subsequently tries to con the US government in 1968 by pretending to defect but comes unstuck.

The absence of the "many-worlds" quantum theory tended to trap this series... admittedly its presence didn't do much for Sliders in the long term.

The unfortunate pattern with this series, as with so many others in the genre was the disintegration of the story quality. This was a repeating failure with Irwin Allen productions and stands as proof that its the story that matters most; all the special effects in the world can't save a yarn which breaks the suspension of disbelief by disrespecting its own conventions. The Irwin Allen series tended to veer into the realm of the fantastic rather than the far-fetched. What's the difference? The far-fetched may be excused as a necessary convention of the theatre. In this category are the English-speaking French, Mongols, Renaissance Venetians, Russians, aliens etc. whom the boys encounter. It's obviously baloney but a remotely realistic treatment would have each episode consumed with communicative antics and a dialogue consisting mostly of "I can't understand you" and less polite versions in multiple tongues. Thus also for the artificial gravity in space craft. Artificial gravity is anomalous to the spacecraft design because it's a technology usually way beyond everything else aboard...just like the Star Trek transporter.

Where the fantastic and bizarre intrude is with the introduction of entities such as the ghost of the Emperor Nero, Merlin the Wizard and utterly crazy storylines such as the one where the aliens turn up in the bunker and want to know what happened to their raiding party which visited Earth during the 19th Century. These critters are from a culture which has practiced and recently abandoned piracy as an economic model. They want to be assured that the humans didn't zap their boys...otherwise they'll destroy Earth. They're eventually placated by seeing their colleagues' ship leaving Earth intact through the Time Tunnel video scanner. Then they leave. So how do they know the temponauts were near their pals anyway? If they can figure that, why do they need the humans to tell them what happened? Aren't they remotely impressed by the fact that Earth has time travel? Don't they want to buy it/steal it?

The Tunnel remains a tantalising conceit for all that. Now if only someone would do a quality remake...

Post# 151 And heeeere's JULIA!!! (Julia Gillard - First Woman to be PM of Australia)

2010-06-24T19:23:00.002+08:00

I've been madly in love with the Supreme Skull of Rust since I first saw her. No doubt I'm now in for a cruel disappointment. Still, the jaded political amateur may enjoy a honeymoon. One of the effects of becoming skeptical is that you can appreciate the phases of infatuation without being distraught when they come to their inevitable end. Every flower blooms its best just before the wilting begins and thus it is with political support.

So, Julia Gillard has snatched the mantle which once looked set to fall upon a much less worthy aspirant...first woman in the Lodge. By assassination, admittedly, but at least she tapped the Ruddster herself. I always thought that she was an inherently tougher person than him and I doubt that there will be any stories of foul-mouthed tantrums and bullying. I believe that Kevin's lapses in this regard were a product of having his spring wound too tight. He's been running about like a frantic ant and appearing to be ineffectual. His actual achievements have been diminished in public esteem by the failure of so many of his projected schemes. If he'd concentrated on a couple of main projects - health and education reform, ideally - and left the rest to others he would probably be riding high now with some worthy results.

My main fret with Julia is that she's being urged by the idiot brigade to revive the carbon tax/levy/ETS monster. I dread that she will listen to them.

Post#150 BP and the Hypocrites on the Hill

2010-06-20T16:41:00.003+08:00

I wouldn't be a likely candidate to stick up for Big Oil but there's a first time...and it's here. The performance of the U.S. Congressional commitee and President Obama takes the cake for unbridled gall.

They're behaving as if all oil drilling wasn't by licence of their own hypocritical selves. They make play of anomalies in crisis plans which have been anomalous for many years and which they could have called for and studied any day they pleased. Obama signed a decree allowing massive expansion of coastal drilling just this April.

They failed to notice that 40% of "British Petroleum" ' s dividends are paid to U.S. investment funds.

If BP and the other drillers are delinquent it's because they've been allowed to become so.

Post#149 My Thoughts on Lovecraft - a Companion to that of Retarius

2010-04-30T07:33:00.006+08:00

Nietzsche once wrote that philosophy is just another form of auto-biography, or words to that effect. This is also true, I suspect, of literature, though some perhaps more than others. I’m thinking specifically of the work of H. P. Lovecraft, which reveals, intentionally or not, so much about him.

Do you know anything of his life, that strange, horribly claustrophobic existence he led with his aunts and his mother, above all, his mother, in Providence, Rhode Island, living through ever downward spirals of gentile poverty and psychological tension to outright breakdown?

I suspect that, in the end, the death of his mother in 1921 came as something of a relief to him, if my reading of his 1933 story, A Thing on the Doorstep, is correct. Edward Derby, the protagonist, a weak-willed character, very much in the shape of Lovecraft himself, professes shock-as the author did himself-at the death of his mother-but afterwards this initial emotional purge “…he seemed to feel a sort of grotesque exhilaration, as if of a partial escape from some unseen bondage.” Later he would write to one of his friends that “My health improved vastly and rapidly, though without any ascertainable cause, about 1920-21.” He is giving away much more than he suspects.

What do I think of Lovecraft as a writer? This is a difficult question for me, conjuring up some quite mixed emotions. He is not my kind of writer; his prose is far too flowery, bombastic and overblown for my taste. For me he is to the craft of words what Antonio Gaudi is to architecture; grotesque, over-decorated and over-ornate. Consider this passage from The Call of Cathulu, generally reckoned to be one of his best stories;

The Thing cannot be described-there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immortal lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. God! What wonder that across the earth a great architect went mad, and poor Wilcox raved with fever at that telepathic instant? The Thing of the idols, the green sticky spawn of the stars, had wakened to claim his own…After vigilations of years great Cathulu was lose again, and ravening for delight.

I simply can’t read that without laughing!

In essence Lovecraft’s prose is like an overstuffed Victorian drawing room; a place where one longs for a breath of crisp air. I contrast him with Maupassant, whose style is taught, precise and stark, a real economy of words that makes the overall effect of his horror story, The Horla, that much the greater.

Yet, for all that, there is a quality to Lovecraft uniquely his own. His ideas on science and life in general were old-fashioned, even for his own time, but there are still deep wells, perhaps even new modes of understanding. Above all, his pseudomythology, expressed in the so-called ‘Cathulu Mythos’, shows a universe where people are not at the centre, and where the gods, such as they are, care nothing for human existence, which is a mere incident in the great cycles of creation…and of destruction.

Post#148 H.P. Lovecraft

2010-04-27T19:50:00.005+08:00

I just read most of a collection of stories by Howard Phillips Lovecraft an author I'd heard much of and read nothing. Writers whose work I've enjoyed have often reverentially referred to him in their notes and I was interested to see what the mentor's quality was.

It was fascinating stuff and I discovered that Western Australia features in the story, The Shadow Out of Time. At 22 degrees, 3' 14" South latitude and 125 degrees, 0' 39" East longitude is supposed to be the remains of an ancient city established over 150 million years in the past by a non-human race. He introduces it through a letter from a correspondent whose address is 49 Dampier Street, Pilbarra. This is a conflation of the name of the town of Dampier and the Pilbara region (including a still-common misspelling).

I also found the foundations of many of the themes to be found in later science fiction; ancient aliens, alien possession, reanimation of the dead, lost languages and scripts. There's an interesting yarn called The Colour Out of Space which prefigures The Blob...a meteor-borne infestation.

Although generally admirable, Lovecraft has a style which, when you read a lot of his work at one hit, becomes unintendedly funny. The words "horror", gruesome", "hideous" and suchlike are liberally spread through every story; he seemed to think that using these terms would induce the described tremors in the reader; I felt they broke the spell by being constantly noticeable. In his honour I produce the following tribute:

"In that year of 1932 I worked in an architect's office in Arkham with Ashley Clarkson-Smythe. My prospects seemed good but a most hideous event soon destroyed my nerves. I entered the office one morning in unwitting good cheer and opened the top-left drawer of my draughtsman's desk and beheld a most abominable spectacle. I was confronted by a sight of such nefandous and abyssal cruelty that I was hard-pressed to restrain myself from uttering a demented scream.

In the drawer was an artefact of a fiendish and inhuman mind. I can barely force myself to describe it - but I must! (The reader has, by now, suspected the nature of the atrocity.) Some filthy, perverted, daemon-possessed thrall of dark powers and worshipper of contumacious and strifeful gods had performed an abomination of the kind only hinted at in the Necronomicon of the mad Arab, Abdul AlHazred. The thrice-accursed villain had bent my favourite paper-clip!!"

Post#147 Nick the Giant Killer (Anastasia speaks on Nick Clegg)

2010-04-21T08:41:00.004+08:00

Do the boys and girls in Oz get news of the current political jinks in England? Here is my personal assessment of the most recent episode in our national soap opera. :-)

The British people like an underdog; they always have. We warm to the little person, the abject outsider, something foreigners will never understand about us. Who but the British would have taken a failure, an embarrassing failure, like Eddie ‘the Eagle’ Edwards to their hearts? He’s a joke, yes, but he is our joke!

Now he’s joined by another; he’s joined by Nick Clegg, the little man, the underdog and –dare I say it? – the colourless mediocrity. Still, he has new admirers after he appeared as Jack the Giant Killer in the recent telly debate. I didn’t watch the whole thing, merely edited highlights, so I’m not really in a position to comment on all aspects of his performance as a debater.

I attend debates in the Union, though, and often vote for a motion that I happen to disagree with because I was impressed by the skill of a particular speaker. There is no harm in that. But the government of this country is a much more serious matter than a Union debate. If people are to be swayed by the ‘Mark Anthony factor’ they really do need to stop and think, think not about the man but the ideas. And the ideas embraced by Clegg and his party are, in my estimation at least, a real danger to this country.

I’ll come on to this in a moment, First let me say a word or two about the debate itself, the dynamics of this futile exercise. I think it’s worth reminding people that we do not have a presidential system in this country: we vote for the party, not the leader. In the circumstances of this gladiatorial contest Clegg, no matter what, was bound to have come out at an advantage.

The reasons for this are simple: people are still alienated from mainstream politics in the hangover from the expenses scandal, so the outsider was always a favoured bet over the chief contenders. That he spoke well merely added to this advantage. That Gordon Brown took on the part of Uriah Heep, ever so ‘umbly trying to ingratiate himself with Clegg added to it still further. This was the worst part of all, the part that made me cringe with embarrassment, the way in which the haggard, tired-looking Prime Minister tried to flirt with the Corporal – “I agree with Nick; Nick agrees with me.” The man is obviously so desperate to hang on to power, no matter what it costs. A deal with the Liberal Democrats offers him one way of doing this.

I am convinced, no matter how much Clegg denies it, that a hung Parliament will mean a Lib-Lab pact; that a hung Parliament will mean ‘voting reform’, which essentially means tinkering with our political system to the permanent advantage of the Liberal Democrats; means that we will never have strong and stable government again; means that we will bring back to permanent power a party that last won an election a hundred years ago. Now is the time for those swayed by the Clegg factor to look long and hard at just exactly what he and his muddle-headed party represent.

So you want to vote for the Liberal Democrats? I take it, then, that you are in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament, joining the Eurozone, becoming part of a European super state, removing the right of this country to opt out of European regulations on justice and home affairs, granting citizenship to illegal immigrants, an increase in air passenger duty to levels that would make travels by ordinary people all but impossible, committing the country to a green energy policy that would effectively mean a return to a pre-industrial economy, and a property tax, supposedly on the ‘wealthy’, but one that would inevitably be extended downwards as a Lib-Lab government shrunk the economy of Britain?

If we are unable to make up our minds in a decisive fashion on 7 May that’s what we will get, at least to some degree, as Brown and Clegg haggle over the distribution of power and the price of office. Vote Liberal Democrat by all means, vote for the suicide of this nation.

All great fun. :-))

Post#146 Dead Meat on a Merry-Go-Round (U.S. Foreign policy and a small moral.)

2010-04-20T19:20:00.002+08:00

In one of my favourite episodes of Red Dwarf, the crew encounter a Justice Field. It keeps order aboard a prison ship by reversing the effect of any hostile act and applying it to the aggressor. In one scene Lister is being attacked by a bad guy and uses this to his advantage, allowing the attacker to beat himself to bits by assailing Lister. When he's on his last legs and trying to strangle Lister, Lister considerately helps him to fit his hands around Lister's neck. As the bewildered baddy is choking, the Cat, who hasn't caught on, appears behind him with a shovel and, ignoring Lister's frantic gesticulations, gives the bad guy the good news with it. Cat's eyes roll back and he falls backwards, unconscious.

It's an analogy that occurred to me in connection with United States foreign policy:

In the beginning the U.S. supported Batista in Cuba. Then they supported Fidel Castro because he purported to be U.S. - friendly. They supported the Shah in Iran because he was a bulwark against communism. When the revolution came they found a regime in place which hated them and responded to their sequestration of Iranian assets by taking embassy staff hostage. This humiliated them and caused them to support Saddam Hussein's war against Iran. Coincidental with their agitation against the Iranian Islamic regime they provided support to the Islamic mujahideen in Afghanistan...because they were resisting Soviet occupation.

Meanwhile, back in the Iran-Iraq War, the U.S. blind-eyed the supply of materials and equipment to Saddam to further his chemical and biological weapons research. (This led to the cartoon, years later, showing an American spokesperson waving papers in the air and shouting: "We know Saddam has weapons of mass destruction - we have the receipts!!") At this point, things become complicted. In Nicaragua the U.S. had supported the dictator Somoza...because he was anti-communist. He was overthrown by the Sandinista rebellion which was belatedly revealed as communist, in the same style as Fidel. The U.S. Congress wouldn't fund the Contras, the anti-communist Nicaraguan rebels. At this point, a gentleman named Oliver North had a brainstorm. He was trying to obtain the release of American hostages in Lebanon (more hostages - the others in Iran had been released years before) and decided to sell the Iranian regime weapons for use against Saddam. The profits were then used to fund the Contras. This was published to the world in the form of the Iran-Contra Scandal and made North a new career as a television personality. This all took place during the late 1970's and mid-1980's during the tenure of Presidents Carter and Reagan. By 1990, George Bush (Senior) had decided that a small victorious war against the Panamanian despot, Manuel Noriega, would buff his image so the generalissimo (formerly a U.S. protege) was deposed and incarcerated in the U.S. Noriega was accused, among other things, of drug trafficking...a charge also levelled against the CIA and North.

In 1989, the Soviets threw in the towel in Afghanistan and the U.S. lost interest in the place. Then came the civil war between the warlords/former mujahideen. This ended in 1996 with the emergence of an even more fundamentalist Islamic faction which had been nurtured in Pakistan; the Taliban (Scholars). Once victoious, they began a campaign of social reform which provoked the Iranian government to accuse them of giving Islam a bad name! They harboured the terrorists of Al Qaeda who attacked the United States in 2001 and provoked the invasion of Afghanistan by the U.S. and its allies. Now, back in Mesopotamia, Saddam had run out of kudos with the U.S. in August 1990. he had attacked Kuwait and occupied it. Saddam had been too enthusiastic with the weapons of mass destruction and had been making menacing noises at Israel. As this coincided with the petering-out of his war with Iran and the end of his usefulness as a goad against the ayatollahs, the balance tipped against him. He was called a "Hitler-figure" and beaten back behind his palisade. Then began a twelve-year siege which ended with his ouster in 2003 and eventual hanging. Now, way back in 1988, the Iranians (I believe) had bombed a Pan American Airlines aircraft, probably in retaliation for the destruction of an Iranian civilian airliner by a U.S. warship. The original published suspicion was that Syrian agents, acting on behalf of the Iranian regime, had recruited a PLO bomb engineer to make the bomb used in this attack. As the U.S. needed the cooperation of Syria during the 1990/91 Iraq war they developed a scenario to place the blame on Libya for the Pan Am bombing. They never thought that Gaddaffi would call their bluff by allowing his agents to be put on trial...but he wrongfooted them and did just that. One was acquitted, the other's conviction continues to be disputed...

ENOUGH ALREADY!!! Hell, I can't remember half this stuff, let alone make sense of it.

So where is the moral, if any? The enemy of my enemy is probably my enemy? Here's my formula for avoiding rude surprises in foreign dealings:

Do as you would be done by...and trust no one.

Post #145 The Great Storm of Perth - 2010

2010-03-29T16:47:00.002+08:00

Yeah, we had a storm. There are some pictures at this site which serve as material evidence. Here's the ABC's take on it. This episode of anomalous weather isn't distinguished by the volume of rainfall, the velocity of wind or the mass of the hail. It didn't surpass all-time records in any of these media of tempest. It was distinguished by the rapidity of the rate of precipitation and the persistence of the wind. Those golf-ball-sized hailstones were distinctive too.

The usual suspects emerged to proclaim the advent of Global Warming, someone suggested that a good line could be had in printing "I survived the Great Storm of Perth (2010)" T-shirts and a natural disaster was declared.

I found the most enlightening aspect of this episode to be the demonstration of the fragility of our construction and infrastructure. It just goes to show how mild the weather is here. In most parts of the world that "storm" would be a joke. I'd hate to show the data to the inhabitants of Bangladesh or the American "Tornado Alley".

Post#144 What Katy Did...and the Daleks can't. (Katy Manning and the Daleks)

2010-03-12T11:17:00.112+08:00

And heeeere's Katy!! I thought she was the ideal kind of English girl I'd like to....make the respectful, adoring acquaintance of. In addition to most of the other chicks the Doctor picked up. Doctor who? Yes, Doctor Who. If you travel with Doctor Who, I'll be very jealous, Anastasia! I want to go in the Tardis first!! (I've already made your respectful and adoring acquaintance after all. You respect and adore me dontcha?) Alright, enough of my antique joke collection. I respect and adore you...that's not joking.

Now, on with the show: Katy has had a life and loved and made two children. Along the way she also became an Australian and hooked up with Barry Crocker. Katy's looking her age in the later photo which adorns the Wikipedia article about her but the delightful young woman is still there...it's just the travelling machine that's suffered some damage. Katy also injured her prospects of appearing in BBC children's television. As follows:

From: "Doctor Who - The Key to Time - A Year-by-Year Record" by Peter Haining:
1978 : May 5 Another former companion makes headline news. Katy Manning poses in the nude with a Dalek for a girlie magazine, and tells journalists: "I did it for the money. Iwas skint. I'd had two good holidays abroad, three months out of work - and to top it all, the VAT man was after me. So why say no when an offer like that is manna from heaven?" Of the photographs, she jokes: "I'd never pose for full frontal pictures. Anyway, why should there be a fuss about my going topless? To catch a glimpse of anything you'd pretty well have to put me under a microscope!" Jon Pertwee comments: "Typical Katy!"

This is a tribute to the above from a Flickr contibutor.

In the meantime, in the real world, the Daleks have made repeated efforts to take over the Universe. This wasn't a mystery when I was a child; evil aliens would naturally seek to take over the Universe. As time passes, it becomes increasingly inexplicable. The Daleks were genetically engineered to have none of the finer sentiments; they have no art, no music, no humour and no philosophy but megalomania. This was the work of the Kaled scientist Davros who anticipated the mutation of his race by shortcutting to their abominable ultimate form.

The question eventually occurred to me: What happens if they win? They spend the rest of Eternity...sitting around,swivelling their turrets in bewilderment and asking each other..."Is this it?" Perhaps they've figured this out and keep sparing their arch-enemy, The Doctor, because he gives their existence purpose. All those times they set him up for a slow death when they could have zapped him in a millisecond...What a horrible fate for The Doc if it was true. He can't let them win but he's their puppet in an endless dance through time and space. And why did the Daleks only ever build one Tardis of their own? In "The Chase" series they send a crew after him in one, but that's the end of that idea once they're flogged. (I know there's a heap of ever-more complicating Dalek yarns in the revived series but I believe the programme really died with the Tom Baker Doctor so I don't give a damn about what followed.)

So what would you rather be, a Katy or a Dalek? Katies die, Daleks don't (have to)...Katies have a reason to live...Daleks don't know what living is. If the Katies could live forever in beauty and youth, that would be a Universe worth having control of.

Post#143 Living the high life, Korean-style

2010-03-10T09:53:00.003+08:00

Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-Il’s personal shopper has written a book. No, that’s not a mistake; you read correctly; the North Korean dictators had a personal shopper. His name is Kim Jong Ryul, a former colonel in the Korean army, now seventy-five years old and living in Austria. His book- so far only available in German – is called Im Dienst des Diktators (At the Dictators Service).

In this he tells of the two decades he spent coming to the west on spending sprees, buying such essentials of the dictatorial life as gold-plated handguns and silk wallpaper. There were also the luxury cars- of course –, metal detectors, hunting rifles, crystal chandeliers and monitors capable of detecting the heart beats of people hiding behind walls! Well, one clearly needs to know if there is anyone there, any potential assassin, anyone who wants a glimpse of a fantastic and forbidden world.

Then there was the food. Kim and Kim liked takeaways, as in takeaway everything, and for some reason they both had a particular fondness for Austrian cuisine. Kim Il-sung went so far as to send a team of cooks to Austria to learn the art behind Wiener schnitzels and the like- “The crazy dictators heard rumours that Austrian cuisine was world-famous and that’s why they wanted the foreign cooks to come here.” All this while ordinary Koreans, the citizens of the termite state, those who did not live in the palaces, often had to live on tree bark to survive periodic mass famines.

Kim Jong Ryul eventually had enough of this farce, taking the decision not to return home in 1994, having faked his death on a final shopping trip. In a press conference he said;

I wanted the truth to come to light before I die so people know how horrendous and brutal it is, as well as to highlight how western companies have – for years – been making money through their dealings with the dictatorship, and helping to support the regime and that these dealings, despite all the embargos that are in place, are still in full swing today.

Well, it has. :-)

Post#142 "Teach Yourself The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" (Zionism, our response to it and USS Liberty)

2010-02-26T17:00:00.008+08:00

I started writing this in 2008 and was prompted to rescue it from draft limbo by the discovery that Australian passports were forged by Mossad and used as cover in the assassination of a Hamas official in Dubai.

I noticed the book with the title referred to above on the library shelf and couldn't resist it. It provoked some wry thoughts along the lines of; "Does it come with bomb designs or toy tanks?"

Stewart Ross, the author, appears to me to have made a sincere effort to achieve the balance he promises in the book's introduction but I'm sure he'll attract the fury of many nonetheless. There's nothing that can be said about this topic that doesn't vex somebody. As I was reading it I could see where various statements that seem perfectly reasonable to me would have some of the partisans frothing at the mouth. In fact, the words "Israel" or "Palestine" alone will provoke some to deny that one or the other of those places even exist. "There is no Israel! It is a false state!"; "Palestine is a fiction of history!", and so on.

That reminded me of what I felt when reading the Wikipedia article on the USS Liberty incident. In this episode Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats attacked and severely damaged a US Navy intelligence-gathering vessel in June 1967. This was during the Six Day War and the dispute about it has become a forty-one year war of words. The two combatant factions are those who accept the Israeli claim that the attack was erroneous and that the Liberty was misidentified as an Egyptian ship and those who believe that the attack was deliberate and intended to prevent the US passing intelligence about Israel's deployments to the Egyptians, either deliberately or through falling victim to Soviet intercepts. I had seen some TV documentaries about this matter but didn't take a strong interest until I read James Ennes' book, Assault on the Liberty*. It convinced me that the attack was deliberate and that was good enough for me to settle for. (I don't really buy that the Israelis are as incompetent as they would need to be to make such a mistake.) One day, out of idle interest, I looked at the article on Wikipedia. The version at the time (several months ago) was so frantically pro-Israeli that it offended me. I felt like adding a flashing banner header to the article, saying "Shalom! This article is brought to you by Mossad! Enjoy!" On the talk page I found the edit war in full blast. The Zionists and their nemeses had been slugging it out for quite a while and were expending millions of keystrokes and were (and are) apparently happy to continue until Doomsday with it.

I am in earnest about Mossad skewing the Wikipedia article. It would be the height of naivety to think that the intelligence agencies of the world don't prowl the Internet putting the case for their nation's interests. As the most commonly-accessed research site, Wikipedia is probably a high priority target in the propaganda wars. I don't have a problem in principle with agencies of governments contributing to websites. They probably correct a lot of errors and provide information that would otherwise be omitted. However, they don't confine themselves to defending the truth. Nor even the truth as they perceive it. They tell downright lies. As do their opponents.

This ruthlessness is what exasperates me about the so-called "Middle-East conflict". I've seen the same film footage used to illustrate television documentaries about the subject which have utterly opposing messages. One is pro-Israel, the other anti-Israel. The footage is cut and voiced-over to give a completely different significance to it, according to the purpose of the propagandist. Another manifestation of this is in the letters pages of the newspapers. In The Australian last year I read a letter from a person purporting to be a professor at an Eastern States university. I hadn't read the letter which he was responding to but it apparently had contained an argument against those who refer to the "Holocaust" as a justification of the existence of Irsael. The writer had apparently made the fairly obvious and well-worn argument that two wrongs don't make a right and that the Palestinian Arabs had nowt to do with killing Jews in Europe, etc. The professor set out to show that the Palestinians were complicit in the genocide of Jews in Europe because...the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was a confrere of Hitler and had conspired with the Nazis against the Jews. Now that's the sort of thing that jacks me off. This professor is obviously a Zionist partisan and is using sophistic argument of the most tawdry kind. Here's a perfect comparator for this allegation: I know of a country whose leader admired Hitler and was prepared to make a deal with him. He visited Hitler both in a private and official capacity to build the relationship. He was fully aware of Hitler's anti-Jewish ferocity and obviously found it no obstacle to friendship. Think about that for a few moments. Think hard, then read on...

That country was Australia. Its head of state was King Edward VIII, later abdicated to the Duchy of Windsor. He was also Emperor of all British dominions, including the UK itself. So much for that type of reasoning.

Another example of this Zionist hard-heading is the response to any attempt to point out the fact that there is a Zionist lobby group. The recent publication of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy has provoked the typical attacks on the authors as anti-semites and dupes of terrorists. I'm not going to attempt an analysis of the work; I haven't yet read it and I doubt that I could improve on what's in the Wikipedia article or the discussion page that goes with it. My interest is in the fact that plenty of people who also hadn't read it, or had only apparently skimmed it, pitched in with boots and all to attack the authors. They neither knew nor cared about the facts. The authors weren't wholeheartedly on Israel's side so they were legitimate targets. This is the Zionist pattern: You are with us or you are a Nazi, Jew-hating, anti-semitic, terrorist-loving, etc. If you claim to be a Jew, you must also be a "self-loathing Jew" or not really a Jew at all.

By now, any Zionist reading this will be shouting, "What about the terrorists? Why does this Retarius not care about the terrorists? He's obviously a Nazi, Jew-hating, anti..."

Not that the Zionists will care about my credentials. I'm not with them so they won't give a damn about my motives. For those with remotely open minds I'll specify that I am an Australian of British Isles descent (some of my Irish cousins would take violent exception to that phrase, "British" Isles) . My great-grandparents all arrived in this country in the 1850's. All of my antecedents at that point and a couple of people I know of further back don't include any Jews or Muslims. My religious position is agnostic.

I once accepted the commitment of Australia to the cause of Zionism without a second thought. It was simple; the Israelis were the good guys and whatever they did was right. I'm amazed and ashamed now to remember that, even as a teenager, I had no idea of the circumstances in which Israel was created or the fate of the Arabs who had occupied that land for millennia. Trawling my memory of the early 1970's, I can't remember myself having more than a very simplistic and ill-informed view on the issue. To go back to those terrorists; at that time the PLO and PFLP were emerging into the consciousness of the international community with their various attacks, particularly the 1972 Olympics incident. Palestinian militants were abandoning talk and trying to make the supporters of Israel feel some pain. Talk hadn't gotten them anywhere; terrorism wasn't going to either, but they didn't know that yet. As for many Australians, these gutless murders were my introduction to the fact of the existence of a Palestinian national movement. My first reaction, formed by the ignorance of anything but the terrorism, was that they were thoroughly vicious and deserved whatever they got. It's very hard now, looking back on childish or teenaged perceptions to remember exactly what I did know or think. I don't suppose I thought much about it at all. It's really only in the past twenty years that I've revisited and rethought the matter. A long-held opinion is like a forgotten item in a stored trunk. It can be very surprising to unpack it and look at it. It's like that with old clothes you haven't looked at for a while. You see them with fresh eyes and wonder at how they ever fitted you or that you wore something like that in public. When I looked again at my opinions filed under "Israel" I received a rude shock. I realised that I'd never given the matter any careful adult thought. Like so many others, I'd accepted the necessity of Israel's existence as a response to the "Holocaust". With older, more skeptical eyes, I saw that the acceptance of this belief was a propaganda victory for the most obnoxious kind of Zionist.

I keep putting that word "Holocaust" in those quotation marks for a good reason. That reason is not a disbelief in the genocidal campaigns carried out against Jews during the Second World War. Anyone in this age who thinks that the great pogroms of the Nazis and their collaborators are fictional is either the supreme fool or a lunatic. My dispute with its usage is that it is a melodramatic term which has been conscripted to unethical ends. The history of European animosity towards Semitic peoples is a very long one. I believe that it can be traced to origins in the Punic Wars. It probably didn't escape the attention of the Romans that the sacred language and script of the Jews were identical to the everyday language and script of their ancient foes, the Phoenicians/Carthaginians.

The term "Holocaust" excessively particularises the matter. There is an implication that the persecution of Jews in Europe is a phenomenon of Nazism and its collaborators in occupied countries. This is very convenient for other nations such as Britain and Spain which have deep histories in this field. It obscures the escalation in anti-Judaic activity which occurred throughout Europe in the 19th and early 20th Centuries.

Australia's official position has been one of relentless sycophancy towards Israel. "Official" in that sentence means the political class, not the citizenry. More and more of us are wearying of the Zionist intransigents. Perhaps even the politicians are beginning to wonder. I have with me the edition of The Australian for Friday, 26 February, 2010. Above the banner headline "Aussies caught in Israeli spy hit" is a quote from Stephen Smith, Australia's Foreign Minister:

"If ... the abuse of Australian passports was in any way sponsored or condoned by Israeli officials, then Australia would not regard that as the act of a friend."

This is his response to the discovery that a Mossad hit squad used forged Australian passports as part of their cover for the assassination of a Hamas official in Dubai. For the Australian government, in the context of Israel doing a naughty, that's tough talk.

One of the things that delayed my writing this post was that I didn't want to add another dead blowfish of opinion to the massive pile that's been dredged up on this topic over the past 62 years. They usually boil down to "Drive the Jews into the sea!" or "Drive the Arabs into the desert!" These entrenched diametrics are so worn out that you'd have to be mad to bother writing in support of either. I finally came up with an innovative solution. It's about as likely to come to fruition as all the others..not at all...so no harm done in indulging in this flight of fancy.

My plan to solve the Israel-Palestine problem: Wind the place up. The Western countries that supported this lunacy can take the Israelis into their lands. I'll even suspend my support for zero immigration and suggest that Australia could take a few hundred thousand.

Like I said, no chance. However, the fact that the problem will never be solved doesn't mean it won't be
resolved. What the Zionists can't see is that final victory for them will be the removal of the last restraint upon the most fanatical of Palestinians. When all hope is extinguished for them they will have no reason to refrain from the detonation of nuclear weapons in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Yes, even Jerusalem. And the rest of us shall sit and watch. In that regard we shall enjoy the judgement of history that we were consistent if nothing else.

*Assault on the Liberty: The True Story of the Israeli Attack on an American Intelligence Ship, by James M. Ennes, Jr. (ISBN 0-9723116-0-2) Currently in its 9th printing.

Post#141 One Small Step - Years of the Rocket

2010-02-26T15:16:00.001+08:00

There was a time when science fiction ripped out of the pages of paperbacks and melted through the celluloid of moving film and took hold of our waking, banal everydays. That time when great rockets roared skyward and seemed to be the vanguard of a nascent imperium; the interstellar Empire imagined by Asimov taking its first steps to glory.

From the early 1960's the pledge of JFK to land a man on the moon was the spring driving the increasingly regular and efficient launches. Gemini followed Mercury, Apollo followed Gemini. It seemed to be an unstoppable progression. Tragedies and mishaps such as the Apollo 1 fire or the loss of Grissom's capsule after splashdown didn't appear to hinder the advance of the machine.

Then came the triumph of Apollo 11 in July of 1969. A genuinely outstanding moment in history; the first recorded voyage to and landing on another celestial body by human beings. The television broadcast must have set a record for the most-watched programme of the most abysmal visual quality. The headline on the West Australian newspaper was massive: MAN LANDS ON MOON.

The missions that followed were, as is now well-remarked, anticlimactic. But for the near-fatal events of Apollo 13, they would have received even less attention. That's one of the most astounding things about these events; people became blase about them in an eye-blink.

The last Apollo moon-mission was in November of 1972. An Apollo launch system and capsule which could and should have gone to the moon were wasted in the Apollo-Soyuz farce of 1975...a pointless exercise in the name of "detente". The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 showed what that was all worth. Caught between the Kennedy-hate of Nixon and the apathy and skepticism of Congress and the American public, the programme was extinguished. Its remnant equipment was used as "lawn furniture" at NASA establishments. As a Australian I can't damn the American taxpayers for this...they were paying for it and it would have proceeded only if they had really wanted to continue paying for it. Still, it was depressing to see.

The "space-race" provoked the imaginations of humanity, then became a historical landmark which was progressively receding. The expression "We can put a man on the moon..." became part of the treasury of cliche...it was usually hooked up with "but we can't - " followed by whatever the speaker felt was outlandish for being undoable. This saying is used less often now and I suspect that there are many now who have completely forgotten that it ever happened or never knew. Imagine that...a child who has never heard of it is probably not a rarity today.

From Perth, Western Australia, my home town, the Moon is now the only celestial body which is easily observable at night. Light pollution has progressed to the point where even the most prominent stars and planets are feeble in the clearest viewing conditions (except for Venus, goddess of UFO's). The stars of "our radiant Southern Cross" are winking out. No one seems to even think it's worth a comment. As for the moon, I feel that Stephen Baxter put it best in his short story "Moon Six"; it has become "just a light in the sky that no one cares about".

The initiative in lunar colonisation has passed from the democracies and is now being pursued by China.( I covered that in Post#22, way back when.) It's difficult to see how the withering away of will can ever be reversed. Perhaps the simple answer is that it won't. There's always going to be a Proxmire, a world recession or some damned thing to soak up government money. In the West private enterprise is the best hope for progress...if a profit can be demonstrated in the venture. Not much chance then.

The rockets are dormant now. Fizzled out. Snuffed out. By economic necessity; by failure of imagination. Those of us who lived in the years of the rocket had a great historical privilege. We heard those words:

"This is Tranquility base...the Eagle has landed"

For a moment we had a glimpse.

Post#140 Retarius where are you?

2010-01-05T11:20:00.004+08:00

Have you given up? I miss you. I don't feel that I can contribute any more to what is chiefly a blog from Oz. :-) Anyway, my dear friend, I hope you are well, wherever you are, and a happy New Year. Love from the Imp.

Post#139 Thoughts on Myanmar

2009-08-13T06:43:00.003+08:00

Will the military dictatorship in Myanmar, Burma, if you prefer, survive? An interesting question, I think. I would have to say that Myanmar shows the very same structural factors that have served to weaken democracy in Pakistan on the other side of the Indian Subcontinent: it has a strong military tradition, a fairly weak civil society, and a fear of national disintegration. The situation in Myanmar is further complicated by a fear of outside intervention.

Remember, too, that the country did not gain its independence by the same political process at work in India and Pakistan. Rather, it emerged as a result of the war against Japanese occupation, involving local Burmese as well as Allied forces. This means that the significant leaders who emerged in 1945 all had a military rather than a civilian background. It's one of history's ironies that the greatest of these leaders, Aung San, the father of Aung San Suu Kyi, the voice of the democratic opposition, is also the iconic figure who has helped sustain the special place of the military in Burmese politics

This has also been supported, as I have said, by the relative weakness of civil society. During the days of British rule the native Burmese played very little part in managing day- to-day affairs, with administrators being recruited from among colonial Britons or Indians. Excluded from the civil service, the ethnic Burmese nevertheless formed an important part of the police and the army. Although an embryonic native middle-class was beginning to emerge in the course of the early twentieth century, it was almost completely wiped out in the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Fear of national disintegration has roots in the early evolution of the Burmese state. In the two hundred years prior to the advent of the British in the 1820s, the Burmese kings had expanded their control out of the lowlands into areas inhabited by different ethnic and linguistic groups. The Shan, the Karen, the Arakanese, the Mon, the Chin, the Karenni and the Kachin, all non-Burmese speaking, now make up approximately one third of the total population, occupying two-thirds of the national territory. Fears that these centrifugal forces will destroy the integrity of the nation have been fuelled by the long-standing insurgencies of the Shan and the Karen. The opportunity this might provide for foreign intervention has strengthened the army's sense of paranoia, creating a siege mentality and a persistent mood of xenophobia amongst the generals. As far as the military is concerned it is they who are the guardians of the nation, the one guarantee that Myanmar/Burma will survive as a unitary state.

Afterthought

As a postscript to the above let me add a guilty admission and a recommendation, not that I have the least hope that anyone is listening!

A few years ago, after leaving school, but before going up to university, I took a gap year, an opportunity to travel to various places in the world, including south-east Asia. While there I visited Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. I also went to Myanmar, though I struggled with my conscience over that, mindful of the request by Aung San Suu Kyi for the world-large and small-to boycott the tyrants. She's a gallant and courageous lady, the leader of the opposition, the rightful leader of the country by democratic decision, the conscience of a nation; it's difficult to ignore her.

Look at the other side of the world, to Cuba. Here the vile Castro regime has been kept in power for so long I would say precisely because of the American boycott, not in spite of it. The one sure way of undermining Castro would have been to allow contacts of all kinds; tourist, cultural and commercial. He would no longer have been able by this process to have identified his Communist tyranny-as he has-with Cuban nationalism.

So, too, in the east the best way of opening up Myanmar to the prospect of change is for the west to abandon sanctions and boycotts. There is every sign-as The Economist has rightly pointed out-that the generals want to follow the same development path as China and Vietnam before them. Isolation has given them security, not legitimacy, and it is this they badly need. Economic development is likely to bring political development, which is likely to bring change. Aung Sun Suu Kyi is courageous, yes, but she is also wrong. There, I've said it!

Post#138 The Protocols of the Purveyors of Pap, or the Fraud of Global Warming!

2009-07-25T02:37:00.007+08:00

I'm back, Retarius!

I’m a student of history, not a scientist. I’ll go further: science bores me. Still, it cannot be ignored; aspects of scientific ‘knowledge’ cannot be ignored. And the one aspect that has invaded my consciousness through multiple media, with all of the silent finesse of a Blitzkrieg, is the whole global warming argument

Let me just say to begin with that I always suspected there was something wrong with this, partly on the basis of an understanding of the historical record, and partly on the basis of simple intuition. You see global warming (GW), or climate change, to use a more exact expression, has been a fairly regular feature of human history: there have been quite significant ups and downs over time. Indeed, one period I call to mind is the early fourteenth century, when conditions were so bad that it is sometimes referred to as the ‘mini-ice age.’

The second level of suspicion, which I attribute to intuition, might be better described as instinct. The simple fact is I don’t like being preached at; I react against both the message and the messenger, whether it is that little clot Lawrence McGinty on ITV news, or that big clot Al Bore, and his relentless promotion of ManBearPig, his phantom terror (South Park fans will understand!) And if The Guardian and The Independent, those voices of the uni-dimensional, lead me to think in one way I invariably think in the other. But, of course, they, Super Obama-that socialist in socialist’s clothing-, Joker Brown and all the other promoters of GW have ‘science’ on their side; I only have instinct. Not any more; oh no, not any more. I am happy to declare that we have all been the victims of a massive conspiracy: the Protocols of the Purveyors of Pap!

For, you see, at last one scientist has had the courage to speak out against this phoney consensus-Professor Ian Plimer, an Australian geologist. His book, Heaven and Earth: Global Warming-the Missing Science, so frightened the liberal establishment that it was rejected by every mainstream publishing house in his native land. He had quite literally to go to the outback to find a small company courageous enough to take him on. The first print run sold out. Further editions followed, one hard upon the other, as the news spread. It’s now to be published in England and the States.

I don’t want to dwell on Plimer’s thesis at length but the chief elements are as follows. First, the GW model is based on the narrowest of explanatory frameworks, with data drawn from less than two hundred years. Second, and even more important, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere amounts to 0.001 of the total held in the environment. More than that, human activity accounts for a tiny amount of this tiny percentage. Oh, yes, there is one other thing about GW: it stopped over ten years ago. In the last two years global cooling has reversed some thirty years of temperature increase.

Serious attempts have been made to discredit Plimer by those wedded to the GW paradigm but the data, for once, speaks for itself. Measurements complied by the University of Huntsville in Alabama confirm that temperatures have fallen. In March Alan Carlin, an senior analyst for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the US, produced a detailed report questioning the carbon dioxide argument upon which GW is based. The report was ignored on the grounds that it was too late to change the EPA’s official policy. No surprise, really. After all Super Obama needs some justification for the $7.4 trillion tax hike he intends to inflict on his fellow Americans as part of his environment bill.

And so it goes on with those committed to GW pushing all the way. A political battle is being fought out in Plimer’s Australia, where Kevin Rudd managed to have his own environment bill pushed through the lower house aimed at curbing CO2 emissions, curbs so drastic that they are likely to devastate the national economy, dependant as it is on coal. The Senate votes on the bill next month. Here opinion is so evenly divided that the whole measure is set to rise or fall on the casting vote of Stephen Fielding, an independent Senator. Given the importance of his vote Penny Wong, the climate change minister, agreed to see him in person. A series of questions were put about the GW data. The answers produced by the minister’s own scientific advisors were so unconvincing, so shot with errors and contradictions, that Fielding’s team produced a counter-response, published as Due Diligence, which tears the whole argument in pieces. The Senator has announced that he will be voting against Rudd’s bill.

I seriously hope that the Australian bill fails, but can anything be done to counter the momentum that GW has gathered across the world, promoted by the G 8 or the G 20 or however many clowns that can be gathered in one place for a spectacular junket, producing more carbon emissions-and hot air-than you and I in a lifetime? Alas, the prospects are not good. GW is the new doxy, uniting all sorts of vested interests, political, academic, institutional, broadcasting and publishing; uniting the American and British governments, on the one hand, and interest groups like the idiotic Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth on the other. Given time the paradigm may shift but only after horrendous damage has been inflicted on the western economy, to the benefit, I imagine, of political tyrannies like China.

I suppose I started writing this in a lightly ironic mood, suggesting the existence of a global conspiracy. I finish in a more sombre frame of mind because I now believe that such a conspiracy does exist, not one born of malice and design but of blindness and stupidity. Say no to Green Fascism; say no to the Copenhagen Treaty, say no to stealth taxes, say no to attempts to undermine our already fragile economy. Global Warming is a lie.

Post#137 Glorybaby (Glory Jagas), Happinesslove, Maldaline Yahaya, Lancy Mokan, Atonia and Edith Zaky [or Edith Zarky] ( African Email Scams)

2009-07-15T17:00:00.015+08:00

Well, that title's cumbersome, but with good cause; it's to guide here any searcher who's encountered this character and wants the inside track. I posted before about the 419Eater site at my Post#89 "African Scam Babes" and this is the further story I promised about my correspondence with a scammer.

Several months ago, I listed my blog at Spicypage (This post has been in draft mode since October '08 and I long ago lost interest in Spicypage) just to see what it was about and whether there was any merit to using the site. I'm still not sure on that (I am now) but I did discover that there seem to be a lot of spammers targeting the site. My first message, other than from the site's welcome wagon, was titled "Hello dear", coming from a person using the handle "Glorybaby" and providing a Gmail address for GloryJagas. The message said that they'd seen my profile on the site (which was, apart from my handle, non-existent) and that they found me interesting and would like to get better acquainted. I was urged to send a message by email so that I could receive a photograph of this character. After this little ritual "we can get going!" promised the correspondent. The sign-off was that race and distance should be no obstacle to love. I used the options on the site to report this obvious come-on as spam and deleted it.

That would have been the lot, but an identical message turned up the next week using the handle "Lovehappiness" (or "Happinesslove; I can't remember now). This time I responded with a message to the correspondent through the Spicypage site, using "The Voice of Sweet Reason". I pointed out that there are many legitimate ways of making a profit through the Internet without engaging in unethical behaviour. I enquired as to what the spammer's motives were. I wasn't expecting this type to reform, I just wanted to see what the response might be. Nothing as it happens.

Then, next week, same message again, using the handle "Maldaline". This time I responded, "Why would I want a photograph of a spammer?"

The next week...same message from "Lancy" something-or-other. I left another Spicypage message saying, "Welcome back Glorybaby, Happinesslove, Maldaline, etc! Your nomenclatural innovations are most delightful but your pitch needs some work, sweetheart."

And the next week...same message from "Edith" - but with the added provisos that I must reply by email and not through the Spicypage site.

At this point I became somewhat irritated. This character not only wants to rip me off, they want me to be an obedient and submissive sap and get ripped off their way! Now any good con has to give the mark something approaching respect (before it shows its teeth) and this scammer wanted to be prescriptive from the word go. Okay, I'll give you something, bastard.

I created an email account in the name of "Bogus Maximus" (no kidding) and sent the message below:

From: Bogus Maximus
To: edzak83@yahoo.com
Sent: Friday, 3 October, 2008 2:20:51 PM
Subject: Your message at Spicypage

I read your message at Spicypage and here's my reply!

Promptly came this reply:

From:edith zaky
To: Bogus Maximus
Sent: Friday, 3 October, 2008 5:19:35 PM
Subject: I WILL LIKE TO KNOW MORE ABOUT YOU.

Hello my love,
i am so happy in your mail to my mail.How was your day?,Mine is a little bit cold over here in Dakar Senegal.
My name is Edith from Ivory Coast in West Africa,5.4ft tall, dark in complexion,(never married before ) 23Yrs old and presently i am residing in the refugee camp here in Dakar as a result of the civil war that was fought in my country.My late father Dr Frederick Zarky was the managing director of Fredcocoa and Associates (Ltd) and he was the personal advicer to the former head of state (Late Dr Robert Guei) before the rebels attacked our house one early morning and killed my mother and my father in cold blood.It was only me that is alive now and I managed to make my way to a near by country Senegal where i am leaving now.I could like to know more about you.Attached here is my picture and I will send another picture in my next mail.I will also like to see your picture.
Hoping to hear from you soonest,
Edith

(Of course, the probability of the sender being female or looking remotely like these photographs is infinitesimal. As in x -> 0. However, for ease of writing, I won't bother putting inverted commas around "Edith" after this. I've reduced the photos for convenience and the slogan on the red t-shirt is now illegible. It says, "I'M AN ACTRESS Can I take your order?" This apparently is a joke about how most aspiring actresses have to support themselves. Ironic in the circumstances.)

My preferred option was to lure Edith into contributing to a blog which I could change from private to public once we'd finished exchanging confidences - it saves work copying emails. So:

From: Bogus Maximus
To: edith zaky
Sent: Monday, 6 October, 2008 1:05:20 PM
Subject: I WILL LIKE TO KNOW MORE ABOUT YOU

Hello Edith! I have sent you an email inviting you to join a private blog which only you and I can read! Please accept my invitation and send your photographs and messages to the blog. I look forward to hearing from you!!

And here is the second "script":

From: edith zaky
To: Bogus Maximus
Sent: Monday, 6 October, 2008 4:43:46 PM
Subject:HONEY THIS IS MY FULL LIFE STORY WITH LOVE AND TRUST

Hello Dearest ,I am happy in your reply to my mail. How are you?, hope is alright, mine is a little bit boring.In this camp we are only allowed to go out from the camp only on Mondays and Fridays of the week, its just like one staying in the prison and i hope by Gods grace i will be free someday, i don't have any relative now whom i can go to, all my relatives ran away in the middle of the war, the only person i have now is Rev. Genadine Isaac who is the pastor of the (Kingdom's Assembly Int'l Churches) here in the camp, he has been very nice to me since i came here but i am not living with him rather i am leaving in the women's hostel because the camp have two hostels one for men the other for women. The Pastors Tel number is (+221761202124) if you call and tell him that you want to speak with me he will send for me in the hostel. As a refugee here i don't have any right or privileged to any thing be it money or whatever because it is against the law of this country, i want to go back to my studies because i only attended my first year before the tragic incident that lead to my being in this situation now took place..Please listen to this,i have my late father's statement of account and death certificate here with me which i will send to you latter,because when he was alive he deposited some amount of money in one the leading banks in Europe which he used my name as the next of kin,the amount in question is $5.7( Five Million seven Hundred Thousand US Dollars). So i will like you to help me transfer this money to your account and from it you can send some money for me to get my traveling documents and air ticket to come over to meet with you. I kept this secret from people in the camp here the only person that knows about it is the Reverend because he is like a father to me. So in the light of above i will like you to keep it to yourself and don't tell it to anyone for i am afraid of loosing my life and the money if people gets to know about it. Remember i am giving you all this information due to the trust i deposed on you, i like honest and understanding people and a man of vision, truth and hardworking, our main language is french but English is my favorite because i also speaks it fluently. Meanwhile i will like you to call me like i said i have a lot to tell you, have a nice day and think about me, awaiting to hear from you soonest,
Yours in love. Edith.

Love? Well, I grit my teeth over receiving protestations of love from a correspondent who is probably male and soldier on:

From: Bogus Maximus
To: edith zaky
Sent: Tuesday, 7 October, 2008 1:46:52 PM
Subject: Re: HONEY THIS IS MY FULL LIFE STORY WITH LOVE AND TRUST...

Edith, I am puzzled by your answer. Please accept the invitation I have emailed you to use the blog to communicate. Email is dangerous because it is traceable. The blog is impossible for security agencies to track so it is best to use it to talk. Once you have signed on to the blog you will be able to see the messages I left you and you can leave your photos and messages there. Because of my position here I cannot risk communicating by email any longer. Please use the blog or I will not be able to help you.

Nice try, Retarius, but:

From: edith zaky
To: Bogus Maximus
Sent: Tuesday, 7 October, 2008 2:57:14 PM
Subject: PLEASE HONEY WRITE TO THE BANK TODAY WITH LOVE AND TRUST....

My Dearest.How are you today, hope you are fine, dear i want to thank for all your effort and love towards me, you have given me hope and i will also like to see you face to face,i like you very much and i want you to know that before i contacted you i saw your profile that you matched mine and you are the type of man i am looking forward to spend the rest of my life with.I am not going to give your love to any other man you will satisfy me,so needless of looking for another man.

Please i have not told anyone except you and the Reverend about the existence of this money and i will like you to please keep it secret to other people because since it is (MONEY) all eyes will be on it.

Remember i trust you honey that is why i am giving you all this information!. My love is for you and you alone,i will like to hear your voice please,just call the Rev and tell him that you want to speak with me and he will send for me immediately.You can call the Reverend and ask him the best time to call me.His office phone no (00221-761202124)

I have informed the bank about my plans to claim this money and the only thing they told me is to look for a foreign partner who will stand on my behalf due to my refugee status and the laws of this country.You will have 15% of the total money for helping me and the remaining money will be managed by you in any business of your choice while i go back to my studies. In this regards iwill like you to contact the bank immediately with this information below,tell them that you are my foreign partner and that you want to know the possibilities of assisting me transfer my 5.7 million dollars deposited by my late father which i am the next of kin to your account in your country.

The contact information of the bank are as follows,

Royal Bank Of Scotland PLC

Email address

(acctsbkroyal2@uk2.net)
(rbsintaccts@icmail.net)

The name of the transfer officer is (Sir.Gilly Bafford).

Telephone number +44-702-4093-601 or +44-702-4094-117
Office Fax number+44-703-1941-816.

The Account Number Is (RBS-343I08701364-QB).

Contact them now on how to transfer the 5.7 milliondollars deposited by my late of which i am the next of kin.I have mapped out 15% for your assistanceMy dear iam glad that God has brought you to see me out from this situation and i promise to be kind and will equally need you in every area of my life including investing this money since iam still too young to manage it.

As i told you before,this camp is just like a prison and my prayers is to move out from here as soon as possible.Please make sure that you contact the bank so that after the transfer you can send some money from that money for me to prepare my traveling documents to meet with you in your country.I will send you another picture latter when i know your mind about this.Awaiting to hear from you soonest!.Yours forever in love,Edith.

As the regulars at the 419Eater site know, it's hard to break through to the consciousness of the scammer and persuade them to respond to what you are actually writing. Another try:

From: Bogus Maximus
To: edith zaky
Sent: Thursday, 9 October, 2008 1:39:03 PM
Subject: Your predicament

Edith, I don't wish to take any of your money. I will be very glad to help you with no reward other than the satisfaction of doing a favour for a genuine lady. But, I regret, I cannot proceed to help you by any means of communication other than the secret blog that I have invited you to join. Please access the blog and I will begin to make arrangements with you for your escape to Australia.

Further, I recommend that you do not trust that Reverend gentleman. I believe that he is actually not your friend and is conspiring with the government of Cote D'Ivoire to steal your inheritance.

Looks like success:

From: edith zaky Saturday, 11 October, 2008 6:10:13 PM
To: Bogus Maximus
Sent: Saturday, 11 October, 2008 6:10:13 PM
Subject: HONEY PLEASE WRITE TO THE BANK TODAY ....

Hello my sweeth daerling Maximus ,honey good morning to you and please how are you today hope you are fine and please how is your family hope thrir alright thank God for that as for me am not fine honey here is too hort to me please help me out.My love i saw your mail just now and m so much happy about it and i also understand you well . Honey please how about the bank ? have you write to them as i told you in my last mail please my love if no please try to mail them today so that they will tell you how to transfer the money please .See honey i told the bank every thing about you all you need to do is to send them mail and you tell them that you are my partner that you want to no the possibilities of this transfer and i believe with this they will understand you better and please do let me no as soon as you write to them ok thank you and kisssss to you bye .Your's sweeth baby Edzak .

Still trying for the blog..the lies are becoming wilder:

From: Bogus Maximus
To: edith zaky
Sent: Sunday, 12 October, 2008 3:01:05 PM
Subject: Your escape to Australia...

Edith, I am concerned that you are under coercion and are not able to communicate freely. If you are able to deal freely, please accept the invitation to the blog. I have placed your emails there but I need you to load your photographs to the blog directly. I cannot help you unless you do this. For reasons of security I cannot go into more detail through email but if you sign onto the blog all will be explained.

Is he off the hook?

From: Bogus Maximus Monday, 20 October, 2008 3:16:50 PM
To: edith zaky
Sent: Monday, 20 October, 2008 3:16:50 PM
Subject: Why no response?...

Edith, I'm concerned. Has something happened to you? Why don't you respond to my invitation? I can help you.

To:Bogus Maximus
From: edith zaky
Sent: Tuesday, 21 October, 2008 9:03:20 PM
Subject: PLEASE MY DARLING LOVE...

Hello my rising sun,How are you doing today ? i hope that you are fine please darling i got your mail and i am very happy to read from you again since my last mail to you we have been without electric light and that is why you haven't heared from me again.Please its likely that i am disturbing you but you have to bear with me because when i try to think about something else i can't help my self i start thinking about you. you know they say that time heals every wound but i think not love and hunger , Ilove you and i am hungry of you.Now darling i will also like to know if you have confirmed from the bank or not please try to write or call them and know if i am telling you the truth or not.i love you today, i love you tomorrow and i will love you forever.yours ever Edith

Today, tomorrow and forever...I shall despise you. But my creative writing impulse had taken hold, so - the grand flourish. Also known as "friends in high places".

From: Bogus Maximus
To: edith zaky
Sent: Thursday, 23 October, 2008 5:41:07 PM
Subject: Consular assistance...

Edith, I am very glad that you are able to make contact.I have arranged for the Australian consular staff in Senegal to assist you in leaving the country and retrieving your funds. My friend, Stephen Smith, the Australian Foreign Minister, has told me that your application for refugee status and resettlement in Australia will be given very favourable treatment.However, there is a slight difficulty. You have not identified the location of the camp you are in. Please provide this information so that the Australian officials can visit you and begin the process of liberating you from the camp. Be careful not to discuss this with others in the camp. There are people in such places who will attempt to extort money from you in order to facilitate your departure.There is some sort of firewall problem preventing the transmission of the photgraphs you have sent by email. Please upload them to the blog I told you about in my previous messages. I will forward them to the diplomatic staff so that they will be able to recognise you. This will prevent any imposture by others.

Yes, I'm so solicitous for poor, sweet Edith. And then look what the ungrateful bitch writes:

To: Bogus Maximus
From: edith zaky
Sent: Saturday, 25 October, 2008 8:02:53 PM
Subject: Transfer of Funds...

Hello My dear,
how are you doing at this weekend?, hope you are doing alright, darling thanks for your mail and your suggestion on how i will be freed by your foreign afairs diplomats, i appreciate your efforts but i don't think is safe for me, i am here and i know what happends here, you don't understand the situation here, please i don't want to be a problem to any person or a group of people and that is why i told you to first of help me to transfer my late fathers money from which you can send me some money to get the valid documents, i don't want to an ubject of pity, no matter my condition, again i don't want you to futher discuss my issue with any person here in Africa, my life is very much of important to me, now if you really want to help me, i want you to tell me so that we can continue with the transfer, if not, i will know my next steps, have a nice weekend as i am hopping to hear from you soonest, yours,
Edith.

Next steps? He's definitely being too overbearing. Let's throw down the gauntlet:

From: Bogus Maximus
To: edith zaky
Sent: Sunday, 26 October, 2008 3:44:44 PM
Subject: Transfer of Funds

Edith, I am increasingly puzzled by your responses to my messages. I appreciate that there are significant cultural differences between us and I have not seen fit to comment upon your expressions of affection and trust towards me. They are somewhat surprising in that I am a complete stranger to you. To an Australian this seems rather disproportionate to our relationship.

Because of my position in the Western Australian government I must use a nonsense pseudonym and common email account to correspond with you. I could not contemplate identifying myself because of the difficulty it could create. I am a senior official in the office of a prominent Minister of the Crown in this State. I have offered to assist you in escaping from Senegal by exercising what would be considered by some to be improper influence through a personal contact in the Federal government of Australia.

I don't regard you as pitiable; you have a serious problem; you have reached to me for help and I am able to render it if you will accept my advice. What is the use of sending me money? Your liberation could be effected within 24 hours without any Australian being paid a penny. I also could not contemplate receiving any payment from you because it would create a serious scandal if the matter became public.

Please reconsider your position. If you refuse I will, regretfully, have to conclude that you are acting under duress or that your story is simply not true.

Four days without reply...he's off the hook. Damn. Well, now for the coup de disgrace:

From: Bogus Maximus
To: edith zaky
Sent:Thursday, 30 October, 2008 2:46:19 PM
Subject: Royal Bank of Scotland Account CLEANED OUT!!...

Greetin's mugu!!! You has bin had mah fraynd. Yays, you has been corryspondin' wid de Bogus Maximus. Ahnd he is a verra wicked fella dat Bogus. He lahks to tell lies in de email and get de poor scambaiters all vexated, mah mon!

Now, really, you should know a phony when you meet one. Your 4-1-9 advance fee scam is not one of the more sophisticated, but, lacking in imagination as you appear to be, you still might think it strange to find a friend of the Australian Foreign Minister offering to save little "Edith" from the terrible conspirators.Thanks to your efforts in responding to my messages Interpol are now in the process of tracing your emails to their transmission site. Impossible? A bluff? Well, you'll find out soon enough if you keep using that Internet cafe.

No reply. With that subject line I'll bet he read it. Was he discouraged? Perhaps I made him a little uneasy about using that Internet cafe. I certainly wasted some of his time and got him to think about what he was writing instead of simply copying and pasting scripts. Along the way I searched for the other names on the Spicypage messages. I turned up "Edith Zarky", "GloryJagas", "Lancy Mokan" and found, in related links the name "Atonia", apparently another alias. Then there's "Maldaline Yahaya" whom you can see "a picture of" at this page at Stop-Scammers.com. Once you open the door to this world of utter falsity you find an infinitely-recurring pattern. In my estimate, Stop-Scammers is itself a scam. It has a monthly registration fee, registration is required to access anything past the front pages and it carries Googleads for the very kind of sites that are most scam-infested , E.g. "Russian Women" etc... I left a message on their guestbook calling them on it and saying, "What a great scam...let the scam-suckers provide you with site content to attract other suckers and get them to pay for the privilege of reading each others' cautionary tales". Strange it is that their Guestbook Moderator did not choose to publish my comment. Far better is the 419eater site which I commend, if only for some bloody entertaining reads. Check out their "Main Scambaiting Forum".

Also you can look at this and make your own conclusions..Maybe this site is on the level...but why run ads for dating services on a site about dating scams? It's not as though they look exceptionally ethical.

There is an ancient proverb which tells us that a fool and his money are soon parted. Another says that there is no coming between fools and their follies. In Australia it is held of old that "You should never argue with a mug". (Or a mugu perhaps.) True as these are, I can't help being provoked by the scum who are luring the fools. Behind the cons is the depressing fact of the enormous and desperate loneliness of so many millions. There is no laughter in that.

Post#136 The Stern Gang of One (Stern Hu, Malcolm Turnbull and the Chinese Espionage Allegation)

2009-07-10T16:55:00.003+08:00

Kevin Rudd knows better than anyone else that he has only so much credit with the Chinese government. The arrest in China of Stern Hu, an Australian Chinese man has prompted Malcolm Turnbull to suggest that Rudd should be taking robust action and exploiting his Chinese connections to the full. This is the last proof I need that Turnbull is just saying any damned stupid thing that pops into his head. If an aggressive approach was tried and failed, there would be no prospect of reversing and successfully engaging in quiet reason. If Turnbull is really concerned for Hu's welfare he should subside and let Rudd pick his way through this minefield without jogging his elbow.

Post#135 Michael Joins Elvis

2009-07-08T17:16:00.001+08:00

Okay, so Michael Jackson is dead. I believe you, already. When Elvis died in 1977 I heard a good line from a friend who was still attending the school which I had recently left. A teacher, who was renowned for his vicious humour, had called my friend's class to order and announced in a mock-solemn tone: "Elvis Presley has died...and now we are all going to go through Purgatory."

Nor was he wrong. And after the post-mortem eruption of Elvis-mania he stayed at a higher level of public profile than he had experienced before death. The impersonators came out in their white jumpsuits and the legend of his non-death began. I can't remember how soon the Elvis sightings began after his death (alright, alleged death - you happy now?) but I do recollect that they coincided in their early phase with the reports of a character called "Lizard Man". In the 70s all sorts of weird apparitions were being reported from the southern USA and this reptilian pedestrian was seen promenading along several highways. (This isn't the more recent Lizard Man of the late 80s, this is an earlier Lizard Man.) Elvis and Lizard man were reported (probably not by a person expecting to be believed) to be walking along the roadside together on one occasion.

I doubt that Michael Jackson will generate a resurrection mythology, although it was suggested by the rumour-mill that his death would prove to be a publicity stunt for his tour. It's a conspiracy which would require so many conspirators by now that the idea is untenable. If he did leap from the coffin at the wake, (singing "Thriller" of course) he'd probably regret it. The suckers would not be happy, to say the least.

Way back when he really was revered a commentator said that he feared that one day Jackson would "awake to a terrible silence". Well, that never happened. When his music faded the scandals and weirdness kept him in the public eye. Now that he is safely dead the reconstruction of his legacy is being pushed along. I heard a speech being made by someone over the radio who was insisting; "He belonged to us - this blaaack maaan!!! We shared him with everybody else." The audience shrieked their approval.

This is really the limit; if Jackson is famous for anything it is the renunciation of his racial identity by mutilation and poisoning of his body. Elvis also carved out a niche in history for his self-destructive behaviour. The Channel 10 TV network has recently been using the excruciating Elvis movies as a filler before their Sunday evening news and I was amazed to see Elvis looking healthy and slim in a 1968 production. I hadn't realised how quickly he had gone downhill and I'm curious about how recently before his death he had become the bloated, dissipated mess of 1977.

I didn't feel devastated when either of them died. I was very sad when Pavarotti went and gutted by the demise of Steve Irwin...but Elvis and Michael didn't bring me grief when they left us. I wondered what I really thought of either of them and concluded that my response was simply pity. All that money, all that hullabaloo and a miserable untimely death. Both had obviously been surrounded by a coterie of people who said "yes" to them. What a powerful and poisonous evil sycophancy is.

Post#134 A Brief Reflection on Trolls

2009-07-03T06:21:00.005+08:00

No, not that kind; the real ones!

I first came across the race of trolls in the Norwegian folk-tales of Asbjørnsen and Moe. Beguiling they can be, ugly they certainly are, scheming they try to be; intelligent they most assuredly are not! These creatures, the creatures of the kind of popular tales that began to emerge in the Romantic era, are but a dim reflection of the trolls of more ancient traditions, who were altogether more demonic. But, in the end, I suppose they are all really quite boring; for, as Oscar Wilde says, ogres have limited conversation, bears, one suspects, of very little brain. :))

Post#133 PMP

2009-07-02T08:01:00.004+08:00

It really amuses me the way in which some people resort to jargon, not occasionally, but continuously. I’m thinking specifically here of ‘lol’. Yes, it’s OK now and again, but you know, I know, most sensible people know that when it appears, as it does in discussions on social networks, that the person in question could not possibly be ‘laughing out loud’ again and again and again. More than that, it often follows a remark, or an observation, that is not in the least bit funny.

Oh, I’m a rebel; I’ve always been a rebel; when the shoal swims one way I invariably swim the other. I’ve stopped using lol altogether, both in social networks and in texting. I would like to invent my own personal jargon. Hmm, what shall I use when I find something particularly funny? Yes, I’ve got it; it shall be Pissing my Panties, or pmp for short. I like that. The trouble is, though, I shall have to be economical in application. Nobody could possibly believe that my bladder has an unlimited capacity.

Post#132 The Power of Seven

2009-06-29T09:53:00.005+08:00

Have you read Tristram Shandy, Laurence Stern's roller-coaster of a novel? If you have you may recall the conversation between Dr Slop and Uncle Toby on the significance of the number seven: the seven sacraments, the seven days of the week, the seven deadly sins, the seven wonders of the world, the seven planets and the seven plagues.

Is there magic in the number seven? Perhaps there is. I've certainly been told that seventh children have extraordinary powers, though I've been unable to verify this, never having met a seventh child. :-)

Post#131 The Great Kings and The Grech Who Stole Ute-Gate

2009-06-26T17:16:00.001+08:00

In the past week mayhem and havoc have been wracking several parts of the world, as usual. The most vivid image from the reportage is of the beautiful young woman dying on a Teheran street. This alone should be evidence enough to the people of any country that they are up the infamous creek.

Iran/Persia, call it how you please, was regarded once as the home of a great civilisation. That was three thousand years ago. Of course, that type of greatness wasn't about democracy and the value of human life wasn't significant in measuring the worth of ancient states. If someone had said "human rights" to one of the Great Kings of Persia the hearer would have been bewildered...until it occurred to him that it must describe his proprietory rights over the human inhabitants of his kingdom; in a similar vein to "water rights", "land rights" and "tribute rights". Among the "human rights" of the Great King would have been the right to dispose of human life as he pleased. In that sense, depending upon one's perception of it, no progress has been made in Iran or the traditional standards have been maintained. I have no special insight into what the average Achmed in the streets of Iran desires in his innermost heart, but I don't think the majority of his type would mind a departure from this ancient custom. The crowds who are demonstrating are being played for fools by the "reformer" candidate and his sponsors, but their desire for freedom is no less genuine. What a precious jewel a genuine electoral franchise must seem to them; the right to cast a vote and have it honestly counted. An aspiration to die for...

And what was the great news here in the Magic Islands of Australia this past week? The dispute about the ute. Our Prime Minister has been accused of helping a car dealer of his acquaintance to
obtain special access to the application process for financial assistance. The car-dealer has made a gift of a utility sedan to the PM and is alleged to have received special favour as quid pro quo. In the course of this tiresome saga a wriggling, writhing bureaucrat was trawled up in the net of a Senate committee hearing. Godwin Grech (pronounced "Gretch" apparently) gave a very good impersonation of Woody Allen doing his neurotic nerd schtick and appeared to have given the Coalition some ammo to use against the Government. It has all gone wrong for the boys in Conservative blue, with Grech now appearing to be securely in the clutches of the Federal Police for forging the "incriminating" evidence. I won't dwell on this story in particular..the details can be Googled easily enough if anyone wants to search "Rudd, Grant, ute, Grech". The story is known as "Ute-gate" and the collapse of the scandal upon its proponents is well-addressed in many sources.

What I'm most interested by is the triviality of the matters that a mature democracy is occupying its public fora with. The wars we are engaged in are not remotely won, the economic crisis is not past, the serious administrative challenges that confront government have not all been resolved. The media (yeah, let's blame them) find it easier to cover these scandal yarns than to grapple with the complex matters, but does the average Adam in our street really want to hear it? When I heard Malcolm Turnbull call for Rudd's resignation over Ute-gate I thought, "Oh for the love of...." I think the triteness of these tactics and the triviality of the confected "issues" play a large role in why fewer people are voting, despite the statutory requirement to do so. The "draft dodgers" who don't register and the enrolled electors who abstain would amaze those Iranians who are getting their heads kicked in for sake of having a real vote. But could they keep a revolutionary fire burning after 100 years of this sort of performance?

Well, let poesie have a try where prose is puzzled:

Godwin Grech, the woeful wretch,
Gave Malcolm Turnbull cause to kvetch.

But when the forgery was found
Malcolm's glee was quickly drowned.

The people wonder what's to boot
In all this yarn about a ute.

Can we not find a better use
For the right to speak
Without they shoot?

Post#130 Reading Clive James

2009-06-23T19:51:00.005+08:00

A few weeks ago, while watching part of a poetry season being screened by the BBC in England, I came across Clive James, a writer and a broadcaster, being interviewed on the American poet, E. E. Cummings, while reading some of his own poetry. I was so impressed by what he was saying that I wrote a piece on my Ana the Imp blog, headed Serendipity: Discovering Clive James.

As part of the process of exploration I acquired one of his books, Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of my Time. It’s a series of essays on all sorts of people, artists, poets, musicians, writers, politicians, all sorts of people; some noble, some who have made significant contributions to human understanding; others, well, vile. As I said in Serendipity, I never thought to find Anna Akhmatova and Josef Goebbels between the same covers!

When I say essays I should make it clear that while each piece is headed by the name of the individual involved, with some biographical details by way of introduction, what follows is really subtle, as the author explores thoughts within thoughts and themes within themes, most often on the basis of a preliminary quotation. As much as anything it’s an odyssey through the James’own life, with dissertations on the things and the people that have moved or influenced him in one way or another. It’s impressive; the range of his thought is impressive. His maze-like mind reminded me of my own; of the way I think and the way I deconstruct, disassemble and reassemble ideas!

At one point James describes himself as a product of the Australian educational system. He was born in 1939, so he’s clearly talking about the style of teaching going back, oh, some fifty years. I really hope, without too much exaggeration, that if Clive James is a typical product that the Australian educational system has not changed too much. Sadly, given my cultural pessimism, I suspect that this is not at all the case. :-))

Post#129 It's Glow-ball War, Ming!! (Ian Plimer's Attack on Climate Change Believers)

2009-06-23T19:10:00.003+08:00

Ian Plimer's recently-published work, Heaven and Earth. Global warming: the missing science, has struck the first significant blow for the skeptics in Australia in a long while..perhaps just the first significant blow ever...I can't remember any skeptical Australian writing on the topic attracting the attention that has been given to this work.

There was a flurry of mobilisation from those who felt called-upon to defend the honour of "climate scientists" and a very interesting attack article appeared in the Weekend Australian. I'm reproducing it here in full because it struck me as a very effective piece of polemical writing, whatever else may be said about it:

"No science in Plimer's primer
Michael Ashley May 09, 2009

Article from: The Australian

Heaven and Earth by Ian Plimer (Connor Court, 503pp, $39.95)

ONE of the peculiar things about being an astronomer is that you receive, from time to time, monographs on topics such as "a new theory of the electric universe", or "Einstein was wrong", or "the moon landings were a hoax".

The writings are always earnest, often involve conspiracy theories and are scientifically worthless.One such document that arrived last week was Ian Plimer's Heaven and Earth. What makes this case unusual is that Plimer is a professor -- of mining geology -- at the University of Adelaide. If the subject were anything less serious than the future habitability of the planet Earth, I wouldn't go to the trouble of writing this review.

Plimer sets out to refute the scientific consensus that human emissions of CO2 have changed the climate. He states in his acknowledgments that the book evolved from a dinner in London with three young lawyers who believed the consensus. As Plimer writes: "Although these three had more than adequate intellectual material to destroy the popular paradigm, they had neither the scientific knowledge nor the scientific training to pull it apart stitch by stitch. This was done at dinner."

This is a remarkable claim. If Plimer is right and he is able to show that the work of literally thousands of oceanographers, solar physicists, biologists, atmospheric scientists, geologists, and snow and ice researchers during the past 100 years is fundamentally flawed, then it would rank as one of the greatest discoveries of the century and would almost certainly earn him a Nobel prize. This is the scale of Plimer's claim.

Before reading any further, I examined Plimer's publication list on the University of Adelaide website to see what he has published in refereed journals. There are a scant 17 such papers since 1994, two as first author with the titles "Manganoan garnet rocks associated with the Broken Hill Pb-Zn-Ag orebody" and "Kasolite from the British Empire Mine". Absolutely nothing on climate science.

Now, before I am accused of attacking the man and not the argument, let me point out that scientists regard peer-reviewed journal publications as fundamental for advancing science. They allow ideas to be exchanged, tested, improved on and, quite frequently, discarded. If Plimer can do what he claims, and can prove that human emissions of CO2 have no effect on the climate, then he owes it to the scientific community and, in fact, humanity, to publish his arguments in a refereed journal.

Perhaps we will find a stitch-by-stitch demolition of climate science in his book, as promised? No such luck. The arguments that Plimer advances in the 503 pages and 2311 footnotes in Heaven and Earth are nonsense. The book is largely a collection of contrarian ideas and conspiracy theories that are rife in the blogosphere. The writing is rambling and repetitive; the arguments flawed and illogical.

He recycles a graph, without attribution, from Martin Durkin's Great Global Warming Swindle documentary, neglecting even to make the changes that Durkin made following an outcry over the fact that the past two decades of temperature measurements had been mysteriously deleted.
Plimer claims that scientists such as himself, who do not agree with the consensus, are labelled deniers, "yet their scientific doubts are not addressed". Nothing could be further from the truth. All of Plimer's arguments have been addressed ad nauseam by patient climate scientists on websites or in the literature.

To appreciate the errors in Plimer's book you don't have to be a climate scientist. For example, take the measurement of the global average CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. This is obviously important, so scientists measure it with great care at many locations across the world.
Precision measurements have been made daily since 1958 at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, a mountain-top site with a clear airflow unaffected by local pollution. The data is in excellent agreement with ice cores from several sites in Antarctica and Greenland. Thousands of scientific papers have been written on the topic, hundreds of scientists are involved from many independent research groups.

Plimer, however, writes that a simple home experiment indoors can show that in a week, CO2 can vary by 75 parts per million by volume, equal to about 40 years' worth of change at the present rate. He thinks this "rings alarm bells" on the veracity of the Mauna Loa data, which shows a smoothly rising concentration.

While it is undoubtedly true that if you measure CO2 in your home it could vary by large amounts from day to day -- depending, for example, on whether you have the windows open or closed, or how many people are in the house at the time -- this is not the right way to measure a global average. That's why scientists go to mountain-tops or Antarctica or to the isolated Cape Grimm on the Tasmanian coast rather than measuring CO2 in their living rooms.

Incredible as it may seem, this quality of argument is typical of the book. While the text is annotated profusely with footnotes and refers to papers in the top journals, thus giving it the veneer of scholarship, it is often the case that the cited articles do not support the text. Plimer repeatedly veers off to the climate sceptic's journal of choice, the bottom-tier Energy and Environment, to advance all manner of absurd theories: for example, that CO2 concentrations actually have fallen since 1942.

Plimer believes "global warming" occurring on Mars, Triton, Jupiter and Pluto proves human emissions of CO2 don't affect Earth's climate. He believes that once CO2 levels reached 200ppmv (about half of today's value) the CO2 had absorbed almost all the infrared energy it could, and further increases will not have much effect. He believes global warming does not lead to biological stress. He believes volcanoes emit significant quantities of chlorofluorocarbons. He believes the sun formed on the collapsed core of a supernova. All these ideas are so wrong as to be laughable: they do not offer an "alternative scientific perspective".

Plimer probably didn't expect an astronomer to review his book. I couldn't help noticing on page120 an almost word-for-word reproduction of the abstract from a well-known loony paper entitled "The Sun is a plasma diffuser that sorts atoms by mass". This paper argues that the sun isn't composed of 98 per cent hydrogen and helium, as astronomers have confirmed through a century of observation and theory, but is instead similar in composition to a meteorite.
It is hard to understate the depth of scientific ignorance that the inclusion of this information demonstrates. It is comparable to a biologist claiming that plants obtain energy from magnetism rather than photosynthesis.

Plimer has done an enormous disservice to science, and the dedicated scientists who are trying to understand climate and the influence of humans, by publishing this book. It is not "merely" atmospheric scientists that would have to be wrong for Plimer to be right. It would require a rewriting of biology, geology, physics, oceanography, astronomy and statistics. Plimer's book deserves to languish on the shelves along with similar pseudo-science such as the writings of Immanuel Velikovsky and Erich von Daniken.

Michael Ashley is professor of astrophysics at the University of NSW."

Now I'm mighty eager to read Plimer's book to see whether that attack sticks! When searching for Ashley's article I discovered a blog which takes an opposing view, Australian Climate Madness. Here is a link to the particular post about Ashley's article. The comments to that piece are an interesting slice of all the usual postures on this. As I said in an earlier post:

"Global warming? Who knows. The majority of us are sitting back bemusedly watching the savants/high priests hurling incantations and curses at each other. Who to believe? Most of us think there's something funny with the weather but, then, everybody always has. If we wait for those guys to agree before we act we'll wait till the heat death of the Universe. So what to do? Forget about global warming. Yes, forget it! What is the argument about really? More to the point, (and leaving aside whether it's real) why are people prepared to pay money to some stooge to gainsay global warming? After all, funding for scientific research is always damned hard to come by, unless there's a military/industrial payoff for someone. So, cui bono, when the stooge causes someone to waiver on believing in GW? The only visible beneficiaries are the carbon-fuel industries. Here's my simple answer to it all: Forget GW and talk about how we unhook from carbon-based fuels. We're going to have to one day; they're finite. The sooner we do it the better. That way, what's left can be used for materials, rather than put up the chimney. If there really is such a thing as global warming and cutting out carbon fuels ameliorates it, that'll be a nice bonus for the future generations."

That was my second post and I wouldn't change a word of it. I can't grapple with the teched-up scientific types or the statistically-empowered lobbyists but I do know when a stalemate is in evidence. My response is pragmatic agnosticism. I expanded further on my skepticism about the global warming issue in this post. Since then I've thought of a few more wrinkles in the issue:

1. One of the experimental platforms left on the moon by the Apollo missions was a laser reflector which allows very precise measurements be made of the distance between Earth and the moon. The results over the past 40 years have shown that the moon is receding from Earth at 3 centimetres a year. A trivium per annum, but multiply it over hundreds of years and think about the fact that the increased radius, multiplied by Pi, is added to the circumference of the moon's orbit. I don't know enough about orbital mechanics and gravitational equations to say whether this means the moon takes longer to orbit Earth, does it in the same time (but faster) , reduces the moon's tidal effect, the intensity of light reflected from the moon to Earth or any other damn thing...but it must be having some effect on Earth's environment.

2. I saw a documentary about a guy who discovered a rise in surface temperatures in the USA coinciding with the period of aircraft grounding after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Apparently the vapours and particulate pollution caused by the massive air traffic in that country were shielding the surface from solar radiation. This "global dimming" effect would be very difficult to quantify and to assess in terms of its relative effects on strata in the atmosphere. If it's cooling the surface layer by absorbing radiant energy, perhaps it's also warming the upper atmosphere by reradiating it at night. It could be either a net cooling or heating effect. (Sheesh.)

3. Apparently the Sun is progressively becoming brighter...I have a distinct feeling that this has an effect on the Earth's climate...

The foregoing 3 paragraphs are risibly superficial analysis. No argument there. Now I could stuff this section full of links and study the subject up to the best of my layman's ability but that really isn't germane to what I'm trying to convey. The fact remains that we really are in the hands of the incessantly disputing "experts". The real issue is how we, the laypersons, perceive this whole question and the answer is...it's going to have to be from a position of ignorance. We can't learn enough about climatology to make our own analysis.

There is a remarkable truth. We are being solicited for votes, menaced with new taxation regimes; all founded upon a premise which most of us have no hope of verifying. This is a modern form of religious proselytisation. The high priests of doomsday science and their skeptical nemeses perform their incantations and conjurings and we must decide with our limited analytical resources whether to believe them.

Post#128 Ramsay Street, or Thoughts on Gordon the Gormless

2009-06-11T19:38:00.006+08:00

I see that that boorish and foul-mouthed cook, Gordon Ramsay, has been shooting of his f*****g mouth in Australia. Not wise, I feel sure; definitely not wise, especially as it even attracted the disapprobation of the esteemed Kevin Rudd.

I’m sure people know that there are some brands that have a very short shelf-life; such is with Gordon the Gormless, a man with little charm and less talent. I would really hope that people in Australia, not reluctant to express an opinion themselves in-how shall I say?-the earthiest of terms, do not take the Great Gormless as just another ‘whinging pom.’ He’s not; he’s a useless whinging pom, something altogether different!

Please, guys and gals of Oz, don’t be taken in by this man. You may think that while his remarks about and to Tracy Grimshaw were completely over the top, he is at least excused by his talent. Talent, what talent? I would not go near any of the restaurants and bistros he runs in London; none of my friends would and none of my family would. You may not have heard of this but he runs a back street kitchen here, which ships ready-made meals to his various establishments; meals made with cheap ingredients and then marked up some 600%. Yea, that’s right, 600%! Gordon the Gormless is not worth the energy of your contempt.

Look, I know this is an awful cheek, but would you mind keeping him? I feel sure that you will be able to find some use for him, even if it’s only as bait for crocodiles! :-))

Post#127 "Corruption? Of course there's corruption!" (Is corruption always so bad?)

2009-06-10T17:20:00.001+08:00

Sooo, Stasi, you askeeng mi about corrarption. Vayry goood! I talk beeg about corrarption - of course, in Australia, we have a high standard of corruption which has a venerable antecedence. The story of corruption in these islands begins with the arrival of...well I'm not sure about that. I was going to say "The First Fleet of 1788" but it occurred to me that the fate of the Batavia was a fine example of rampant corruption. Then again...I'm adopting a Eurocentric posture...there must have been indigenous corruption before foreigners worked their magic on the place.

Aboriginal culture has been invested with an artificial regularity by the distance in time from which we perceive it. The existence of politics, economics and the corruption that accompanies them was as much a part of aboriginal Australian life as it was in any other part of the world. If it wasn't, then the aborigines must have been the only branch of humanity to live just like the plastic diorama figures in museums. Bob the Builder or Thomas the Tank Engine would have spicier lives. I can imagine an ambitious man of the tribe inviting an elder to a private rendezvous and offering him him some delicacies..."I've got some nice kangaroo tails here for you, uncle. Now about that fellow I need cursed...."

Corruption comes in many forms, but most of it falls into these categories:

1. Stealing from the entity that you have an obligation to; tickling the till, rorting allowances, pilfering materials/equipment.

2. Requiring a payment to do your lawful duty; you require a gift from someone to do what you're paid to do for them already.

3. Receiving a payment to do something unlawful; just about anything you can think of.

4. Using influence or authority to prefer your own interest or that of another; "fixing" tenders, giving "mates' rates", "jobs for the boys/girls".

The first and fourth categories are those which politicians prefer. The difficulty is that the disclosure of the corruption and the ensuing rituals of media torture and dismissal are good fooder for journalists but don't necessarily advance the national interest. Joel Fitzgibbon has just been driven from office without anyone actually proving that he wasn't doing a passable job as Minister for Defence. I can believe that he was tageted by vested interests in the defence bureaucracy because he was goring their oxen. He would not be the first; Defence has a well-earned reputation for bastardry. On the larger world stage, Bill Clinton lost moral and international political authority for a sex scandal which had no bearing upon great matters of state. While the scandal raged, Osama bin Laden was taking care of business. Would victory over the despots have been achieved more readily if every grubby detail of the private lives of Allied generals and politicians had been broadcast during World War II? Not likely. Abraham Lincoln denied that he said it but approved the sentiment of an anecdote that quoted him as responding to complaints about U. S. Grant's alleged boozing by saying, "Find out what sort of whisky he drinks and send a case of it to every general."

On the other hand, there is the slippery slope. There is a line in the Judaeo - Christian scriptures which tells us: "Thou shalt not bind the mouths of the kine that tread the grain." Of course, the kine may get the idea that eating the grain should take precedence over grinding it. Instead of just picking up the spillage, they might decide to tackle what's supposed to go under the millstone. The extent to which some people will abuse a privilege when they become disinhibited is a fair warning in this regard.

So there is the dilemma for the citizenry; making a gossip-feast of corrupt behaviour may keep the media wheels turning and provide taxi drivers with topics to pass time conversing about with passengers. It may also be at the price of crippling a leader engaged in competently performing necessary and difficult work. However, blind-eyeing it may also be a step on the path to disaster and it's usually not possible to foresee exactly where the path is leading in any particular situation. So, we are returned to square one. Exasperating as it is, we must suffer the repetitious disclosures because we can't really just let it pass. It's the melodrama that is confected around it that wears me out and which prompted this post on the subject. I just wish it was taken in stride and not offered to us as a wonder of the world. The title of this post is a quote from a former Police Commissioner of Western Australia, Brian Bull. If only the scandal-mongers would take his point and stop boring us to death with their excitement.

Post#126 All Votes Are Equal, But Some Are More Equal Than others

2009-06-09T21:24:00.007+08:00

I thought I'd share this, Retarius. Please forgive the double post. :-)

OK, let’s begin with my fallback position and my lifeline: I don’t like the British National Party; I do not like its brand of politics; I do not like its racism and I do not like its ideology. I say this to avoid any misunderstanding arising from what I’m about to write, for I know how easy it is for misunderstandings to emerge. I would also suggest that this particular piece be read in tandem with The Resistible Rise of the BNP, which I wrote last week.

Anyway, I find it particularly amusing how certain political developments are received; for that reception usually tells me more about recipient than the object of their concern. Democracy is democracy, and all votes are important, all votes are meaningful in one way or another. But, oh no, they are not. Look at the pious statements, the expressions of shock and outrage, following in the wake of the BNP’s minor triumph in the European elections, allowing them to send two representatives to Europe. David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, a man whom I personally happen to admire, says that, “It sickens me and it should sicken everybody…it brings shame on us that these fascists, racist thugs should have been elected to the European Parliament.” Corporal Clegg of the Liberal Democrats says that the BNP, “…don’t provide any hope and any answers.” Paul Kenny, the General Secretary of the GMB union, said, “On D-Day, Britain sent an army to Europe to stop Nazis getting to Britain [Not exactly, Mr Kenny, but never mind!]….Britain is now sending Nazis to Europe.”

We have seen it all before, have we not, that democracy is a ‘good thing’ when it produces the results that we want. We, in the west, hold up democracy, with all of our cultural conceit and arrogance, as the panacea for the ills of the world, the ills, for example, of the Muslim world. For democracy, as Graham Greene’s Alden Pyle would have preached, is the ‘Third Force’, the new beginning, is it not? But give Muslims the vote then what do you get? Why, Hamas among the Palestinians, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad among the Iranians. The latter just happens to have much popular legitimacy as Barack Obama and a hell of a lot more than Joker Brown.

So, now Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons are off to Strasbourg, and the other politicians walk off the stage to demonstrate their self-righteous disapproval. Not many are prepared to face the simple fact that the corruption of our whole complacent political system is to blame; and by corruption I mean so much more than the expenses scandal.

Our prized national democracy is little better than an elected dictatorship, where a government is chosen often not just on a minority of the popular vote but on the basis of contests in key ‘swing constituencies’, where a fraction of the vote determines the eventual outcome. There are whole areas of the country that can safely be ignored, because we all know the vote there is, so to say, predetermined.

The worst parts, the most neglected parts, are those huge fiefdoms of the Labour Party, particularly strong in the north of the country, ruled over by the modern version of the Robber Baron. I would go so far as to say that people in places like Humberside have effectively been ‘disenfranchised’, whether they vote or not, if that makes sense, in our Westminster elections. Oh, we would not have these Fascists in Europe if the elections were on the basis of good-old ‘first past the post’, say the jeremiads. No, we would not; but we would still have close on a million people with no effective voice.

The fact remains, as I said in my previous piece, that people are turning to the BNP precisely because their concerns over immigration, over their own position in society, over housing and over jobs, are simply being ignored. For God sake, forget the shock horror over the success of the BNP; look at its manifesto. What will you see? Why, it’s pure ‘Old Labour’, with a strong emphasis on nationalisation, high taxation, subsidy and protectionism. Yes, every vote for the BNP is an expression of disquiet over immigration policy. More than that, it’s the call of the marginalised and the dispossessed; it’s a call for the old left-wing certainties and shibboleths of the past. Now, there is a paradox upon which to take my leave!

Post#125 We Don't Do Corruption

2009-06-01T19:34:00.005+08:00

I would be interested to know, Retarius, if you and your readers, those who are not English, of course, are picking up on the political scandal that is rocking the Mother of Parliaments, the one cantering on MPs expenses? I cannot imagine you have not but I understand just how insular news can be, so anyone who has not you can pick up a flavour of this in three of my Ana the Imp pieces, Two Cheers for the Telegraph, or the Ducks say Fuck! (24 May), Duck Soup (21 May), and The Crooks’ Parliament, or if this is Democracy Let it Die (16 May).

There is a lovely irony to this for, you see, we do not do corruption here. You might, the rest of the world might but, oh no, we don’t. At least we did not up till now. Poor innocents: we are making up for lost ground, and how we are making up! Most people are angry over the big stuff, like the claims for moat cleaning (yes, you read that correctly, moat cleaning!), large screen TVs, fraudulent mortgage claims and all sorts of consumer luxuries that have absolutely nothing to do with Parliamentary business. But what I find most irksome is the sheer pettiness of some of the claims, claims that reveal so much about the character of our representatives. Among the worst of these was a claim for a single Kit-Kat, watching a porno movie, a wreath for commemorative Sunday and money put in a church collection plate. Can you believe that, can you believe the mentality of people who think like that? If it wasn’t just so funny it would be tragic. :))

Post#124 Laughing in Spite of Oneself

2009-06-01T09:29:00.007+08:00

Have you ever wondered about the nature of humour, why we find some things funny and others not? Let me put this another way: have you ever found something funny despite yourself, despite all of your ‘purer’ instincts. I know I have. So, here is my confession.

I did a little research on the subject of Josef Goebbels. Whatever one happens to think of this man-and I personally find him rather repulsive-he was a propagandist of genius. Shortly after he became Gauleiter of Berlin in 1928 he founded a paper, Der Angriff, which he used as a vehicle for his views and a tool of his methods. One of his targets was the Jewish police president of Berlin, a man by the name of Dr. Bernhard Weiss, constantly referred to in Der Angriff by the insulting name of ‘Isidor’.

Now, Goebbels was the kind of man best ignored, a man referred to by one of his own party comrades as a ‘poisonous dwarf’. But poor old Doctor Weiss, in many ways a prime example of a humourless Prussian bureaucrat, was forever running like a bull at Goebbels’ rag. He repeatedly took Der Angriff to court, and was repeatedly awarded damages and costs. In the meantime the circulation of the newspaper increased and increased.

On one particular occasion the paper’s cartoonist, who went by the pen name of Moljinr, produced an illustration showing Dr Weiss as a donkey. Once again Der Angriff was taken to court, and once again judgement was passed in favour of Weiss. The day following the headline in the paper was “Judge Agrees: Isidor Does Look like a Donkey.”

Yes, I laughed.

Post#123 A Polished Joke - a Riposte to Lenin in Zurich (Communist Era Humour)

2009-05-31T15:40:00.005+08:00

Nice one, Stasi!! Here's a favourite of mine from the borscht old days (or barszcz in this case):

A political organiser in a Polish factory in the 1970's is despairing over the indifference of his comrades to the great matters of state. One day he rails at them, demanding that they demonstrate their ideological preparedness by giving brief biographies of the senior party members. He asks them to speak about various ministers of State, all of whom his comrades apparently have never heard of. When they purport to know nothing of the career of the head of government he bursts out in exasperation: "You numbskulls!! If you spent less time boozing at home and more time improving your minds at political meetings you'd know who the most important people in our country are and why they're important!"

The ensuing, sullen silence is broken by a worker calling out, "If you're so well-informed, tell us about Krzysztof Novak." The organiser is bewildered. He's never heard of any bigwig with that name. He then suspects that he's being mocked; that this is an imaginary person. "There is no significant person of that name!", he retorts.

"Here is his significance", the worker says; "If you spent more time at home and less time at political meetings...you would know that Novak is the guy who is screwing your wife!"

Post#122 Lamia, Bankers and Hell

2009-05-31T09:02:00.007+08:00

I saw Drag me to Hell recently, directed by Sam Rami, the guiding hand behind the Spider Man movies and, still earlier, The Evil Dead. I loved this movie but then I love the whole horror movie genre. I also love discovering something new. Rami’s movie introduced me to the Lamia, who appears as a devil-like demon in the movie. I looked into this, discovering that the Lamia has deep mythological roots…and that she is female, one with a tragic history, a plaything of the selfish passions of the gods.

In Classical mythology Lamia was a Queen of Libya. Beloved by Zeus, she incurred the wrath of Hera, who, in an act of revenge, killed her children. Either cursed by the jealous goddess, or consumed by grief, Lamia turned a monster. Taking on the partial shape of a serpent, she began to devour other people’s children in furious envy.

In Greek folklore Lamia has the same basic form-and purpose- as the witch Baba Yaga in that of Russia, a monster who combines a taste for human flesh with the gift of prophecy; a monster who serves as a warning. Philostratus, in The Life of Apollonius, says that she took on the shape of a beautiful woman at will to entice young men prior to devouring them. Something of the tragedy of Lamia was later captured in a romantic form by John Keats, who describes her thus;

She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue,
Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue;
Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard,
Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr'd;
And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed,
Dissolv'd, or brighter shone, or interwreathed
Their lustres with the gloomier tapestries-
So rainbow-sided, touch'd with miseries,
She seem'd, at once, some penanced lady elf,
Some demon's mistress, or the demon's self.
Upon her crest she wore a wannish fire
Sprinkled with stars, like Ariadne's tiar:
Her head was serpent, but ah, bitter-sweet!
She had a woman's mouth with all its pearls complete:
And for her eyes: what could such eyes do there
But weep, and weep, that they were born so fair?

As far as the movie is concerned I thought that Christine’s fate was rather hard. If anyone deserved to be dragged to hell it was the board of directors of the bank she worked for, not a lowly employee. The old gypsy’s curse was misdirected; we can all understand that much!

Post#121 Lenin in Zurich

2009-05-28T17:38:00.004+08:00

Do you really want me to tell a joke, Retarius? My sense of humour is slightly on the rarefied side! Anyway, just for you.

The setting is the old Soviet Union in the days of Brezhnev. Pravda announces the unveiling of a newly commissioned painting, entitled Lenin in Zurich. The day arrives. All of the most important people are there, the members of the Presidium and the Supreme Soviet; Brezhnev himself is in attendance. The artist and the director of the Academy are on the podium, with the painting between them, covered by a small curtain. The Director rises, welcomes the guests, and announces. “Comrades, I’m delighted to unveil this tribute to the great Lenin.” The curtain is drawn aside. There is an audible gasp from the crowd, followed by a stunned silence. The Director looks at the painting, which shows Trotsky in bed with Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife. He turns to the artist and whispers, “Where the hell is Lenin?” “Oh”, the artist replies, “Lenin’s in Zurich.”

Quickly changing the subject, I noted your lamentation over getting people to read blogs. Does it matter? There are thousands upon thousands of these things. I write for myself; I write for the love of writing; if someone else takes pleasure in what I write, even if it’s only one person, then that is a welcome bonus. True, I have drawn other people’s attention to Ana the Imp, friends and people I know from other networks. I know they have come and taken some benefit, which is pleasing enough in itself. I also know that a piece I wrote last month on Paul Ogarzow, The Forgotten Serial Killer, has been flagged up by a web page in New Zealand as one of only two online articles in the English language on this man, and the better of the two! Can I ask for any greater accolade? :-))

Post#120 Pirates of Amnesia (Tactics for defeating the Somali Pirates)

2009-05-01T16:41:00.001+08:00

I'm been watching in bewilderment as the saga of piracy along the East African coast has progressed through weeks to months in length. The thing that I can't figure is why the word "convoy" has never entered the discourse. The convoy system that worked so well against submarine attacks could easily be applied to thwarting the Somali pirates.

An international force could be stationed at sea in several rendezvous points where vessels intending to use African-coast shipping lanes could find escorts. With GPS technology this should be a very easy procedure. It's strange how the experts on warfare forget the lessons of the past. In the first world war the generals forgot everything that had ever been learned in the thousands of years of refinement of the art of siege warfare and had to relearn it the hard way. The skills of the armourer were lost too; troops being sent into battle with only fabric uniforms for protection, many without even the most basic helmets. Thus the lessons of two World wars in the field of naval defence seem also to have been lost.

A combined force of surface and submarine vessels could probably break the economic back of the piracy industry off the East African coast within six months. Now how do I persuade Hillary Clinton to read this?

Post#119 Ruddy Nonsense (Nicholson and The Australian versus Kevin Rudd)

2009-04-06T17:55:00.004+08:00

Nine days ago The Weekend Australian ran a cartoon by Nicholson in which Kevin Rudd was represented by two legs protruding from the posterior of Barack Obama. Two days ago Nicholson depicted Rudd as lost under the dinner table at the G20 banquet. In this same edition of The Weekend Australian an editiorial rebuked those who had taken offence at Nicholson's crudity. The gist of it was that "lefties" wouldn't cop their poster-boy being attacked.

I was annoyed by both cartoons, not because of crudity or being a thin-skinned "lefty"; the cartoons were simply baseless. Rudd has not distinguished himself with any particular sycophancy towards Obama and has been less Obameffusive than many other heads of state or government. As for the banquet, the seating was absolutely according to the international conventions of protocol and, in terms of personal favour or otherwise, signifies nothing.

The article in the same edition which dwelt on Rudd's "slight" was, for the same reason, a complete waste of space. If anyone is pushing a barrow here, it's not "lefties".

Post#118 Carbon Schmarbon (Australia and the Carbon Tax / Emississions Trading Scheme)

2009-03-27T17:14:00.001+09:00

I previously denounced the "carbon tax" concept in a post to this blog as a revenue-raiser which would make no constructive difference to energy consumption practices. Recent noises emanating from Canberra have conformed perfectly with that diagnosis.

I've emailed various politicians (using my real name) to enquire as to what the causal connection is between taxing carbon and a revolution in the energy-supply industry. I've suggested that the industries using carbon fuels will simply pass the costs along to their clients. That won't put money into the development of alternative energy. It will simply push inflation as everybody tries to recoup their losses by passing the costs along.

The response has been disappointing. I know these messages are read by minders, not the MPs themselves, but I expected that a request to be referred to the reference material which supports the concept is within the bounds of the possible. No such luck. Just proforma replies to the effect of "Thankyou for your comments. They will be drawn to the attention of..."

It's extraordinary that an assumption can be embedded so deeply in the process of public discourse without any convincing argument ever having been put for its validity.

Post#117 Terrorists Prove That Imran Khan is Wrong! (Terrorist Attack on Sri Lankan Cricket Team.)

2009-03-05T17:36:00.005+09:00

At Post#99 I noted that a gaffe by George Bush had verified the political insight of Imran Khan. Unfortunately, the attack by terrorists on the Sri Lankan Test cricket team in Pakistan have shown that Imran has at least one blind spot regarding the extremists in his homeland. I have seen him being interviewed on various television programmes in which he has confidently expressed a belief that cricket is too close to the hearts of his countrymen for anyone to dare an assault upon it.

This is a view which has been held by quite a few people and has been incorporated into the savage criticism that has been directed at the Australian national team for refusing to tour Pakistan. The general theme is that India's economy provides massive financial incentives to Australian players and that fear of terrorism has been a convenient excuse to avoid Pakistan and spend more time in India; making commercials, music videos, paid public appearances, etc.

If there was ever any truth in this it isn't going to apply in future. And if India is the next target for anti-cricket terrorism no amount of largesse will lure foreign players there.

It seems likely that the extremists have decided to demonstrate that nothing human is sacred to them; not life, not youth, not innocence. They are sending a message that nothing and no-one is "barlies". We should heed this message. Any inclination to mercy in dealing with these creatures should wither in the brutal heat of their villainy. Let them convince us that they have no humanity. The inhuman have no need of human rights. Yes, let them continue to enlighten us... when the time comes, we shall know how to deal with them.

For all that, I wish Imran Khan had been right this time.

Post#116 Mantis on the flyscreen (Archimantis latistyla)

2009-02-25T16:18:00.005+09:00

Yesterday I found a large brown mantis sitting on the outside of the flywire on my kitchen window. It was about 12 centimetres in length and its abdomen section was about a centimetre in diameter. I was quite surprised to see this critter; I haven't seen a large green or brown mantis in more than 10 years. It often happens that something disappears from sight and a long time passes before you notice its absence. Thus with the mantises. The only ones I've seen for a long while were puny little green ones - and not that many or often.

I took a cobweb broom, cornered the beast and goaded it into climbing onto the broom-head. I then carried it across the yard to a bush which would provide it with better hunting and cover from the birds that might like to feast on it. During the pickup phase of this operation the mantis' rear end curved up and appeared to be trying to engage the broom with the pincers at the end of its abdomen. I noticed a similarity between this feature and the pincer-tail of the earwig. The mantis, however, didn't appear to have much flexibility and made this manoeuvre quite slowly.

I don't know what sort of predator this would be effective against; perhaps these pincers are mostly used for helping it to cling to plants.

Post#115 A Needless Dying (Black Saturday: 2009 Victorian Bushfires)

2009-02-20T16:36:00.000+09:00

I haven't had much experience of the sort of lifestyle that people prefer in the forested hinterlands around Australian cities. My only contact with it has been brief visits to relations who have operated hobby-farms in Western Australia and New South Wales. Both families had experiences of bushfires approaching and menacing their homes and I read their stories in occasional letters and Christmas cards and saw some photographs of the efforts of country fire service units confronting these blazes. When I first heard these yarns in childhood and teenage years I thought it was just a manageable nuisance that came round every year and I wasn't all that concerned by it. I knew nothing of the various famous episodes of catastrophic and fatal bushfires. If they were mentioned they went over my head as just part of the dreary tapestry of the distant past (i.e. more than twenty years ago).

I woke up to the fact that these lethal events were contemporary in 1983 when the Ash Wednesday fires dominated the public fora of the day. I then sat up and took serious notice of what was happening. I couldn't understand how this could be happening in modern times. How could people die in a bushfire when they were in their own homes or in a vehicle on a road? My puzzlement was due to two factors: The first was that I had no idea of the power of such fires. In fact, I don't think there was much in the way of film footage of fires of this degree of intensity and I couldn't visualise it for myself. I'd never personally seen any fire in open country. The second was that I had no idea of the lunatic practices that facilitated the destructive effect of the fires.

I was greatly enlightened by the sights which were available to be seen once the media took up the issue of modern forest-dwellers and their environs. Once I caught on to the way in which eucalypts give up flammable vapour and the speed and volume of the waves of fire this produces, I was amazed to see the proximity in which housing was built to them. Throughout Victoria and New South Wales there were enormous districts in which a helicopter-borne camera could reveal the roofs of thousands of houses built in dense forest. Forest which bustled around and loomed over the buildings. A majority of the houses had large trees abutting them; the trunks pressed up right against the walls of the houses. This explained very simply the peril faced by these residents.

It didn't explain their being subjected to this situation. The next phase of my education was to discover that the authorities insist that people may not remove trees from the vicinity of their properties and that strong penalties are applicable to those who defy them. This seemed to me to be Alice-in-Wonderland absurdity. I've never had reason to reconsider that response. Some of the very residents at most risk from these crackpot policies are resistant to preventive clearing. They're apparently prepared to expose themselves and others to a potential horrible death for the sake of preserving their forest surrounds.

There is a simple solution to this problem. Like all such things, it will be grievously unpalatable to most who have a vested interest. The governments with planning control power must decide whether any particular forest area is to be allowed to be used for habitation. If it is, a decision must then be made as to what density of settlement will be allowed. It's really a matter of deciding how much of the forest one will tolerate seeing felled. If the answer is none, there can be no housing. If there is an acceptable loss, you allow as many houses as can be safely built within the sacrificed proportion of land, subject to these provisos:

1. A completely cleared area of 100 metres radius should be around each dwelling. 2. Building with inflammable materials should be restricted; the exteriors of buildings should be composed of brick, ceramic, stone or metal. 3. An approved shelter must be built within 10 meters of the house, accessible both from a direct entrance and from an access tunnel from the house.

That will do for starters. Here are some more ideas:

A water tank on a platform adjacent to and higher than the house would allow gravity feed of water so pumps would be unnecessary. The tank could be filled from a tanker truck operated by the fire service and checked/topped up twice a year. Obviously, it would be of a sealed type which would not allow evaporation. It would be filled through a feed pipe from ground level which would would have a return valve where it entered the tank. A ventilation valve would open when the water was to be drawn for use in sprinklers or hoses.

Every house could be fitted with a roof-mounted reflective curtain wich could drop down over the house. This could be made of a very light material which would be drawn up into a container above the roof until it was deployed.

And what about all those people already living in large numbers in dense forest? Once an acceptable proportion of clearing is determined, some of them, perhaps most of them in some areas, will have to be removed. I can hear the roars of fury already. Let 'em roar. No-one would baulk at prohibiting settlement on the rim of an active volcano or on a mountain slope known for periodic massive mudslides or rock avalanches. The time has come to crush the idiot brigade beneath the boots of common sense. If that means dealing with ferocious protests and paying thousands of millions in relocation compensation, so be it. It took a massacre to bring a little improvement in the gun control laws and this is the massacre that should bring reality to bear upon forest settlement practices. At this time of writing the death toll has reached 208. Some of these are children. Most of these people did not die of smoke inhalation. They burned while alive and conscious.

The craziness has gone far enough. There are too many timber houses built on slopes covered in trees; too many of them have massive glass facings which provide no protection and allow radiant energy to ignite the contents of the houses. I recently saw some lunatic architect's work in the field of treehouses being praised in the Weekend Australian Magazine. What a great idea. Let's not just have the fuel-trees adjacent to the house or growing in a central courtyard; let's mount dwellings on top of them! That'll make for a nice cozy fire, won't it?

We've had Ash Wednesday, Black Friday and now, Black Saturday. How many more days of the week have to be racked up with portentous names as memorials to stupidity?

A final point. Would-be social engineers keep singing to us the praises of high-density dwelling. Whatever arguments are mustered for it, most people don't want a bar of it. That's why the population keeps seeking sea-changes and tree-changes. It's one more weight in the scale that supports the argument that we need to contain our population and immigration should cease as a first step. We're being confronted by environmental stress and peril on multiple fronts and most of it would alleviate if we simply reduced the poulation of the country by a couple of million. We could knock down some of these new-minted "infill" slums in our cities and create managed parkland estates that would remove the impetus to push ever-outward into the perilous hinterland.

Post#114 The Mangled Meridian (AM versus PM)

2009-02-14T11:20:00.000+09:00

There's been an advertisement running as part of a government campaign to discourage the sort of reflexive violence that's seen several deaths in recent years in this town. It's called the "One Punch Syndrome". Somebody is affronted and responds with a powerful single punch which results in the death of the recipient. The advertisement shows a couple of blokes out on the town at night and imbibing plenty of alcohol while failing to succeed in their passes at women. One of them is then bumped into in the street and responds with a punch that kills the careless passerby. In a second version of the ad which usually runs in a slot soon after the first, he's seen restraining his temper and walking away.

The advertisement is punctuated with time calls as the characters work their way through the grog and the unsympathetic females. It begins with something like "9:00 PM" and proceeds through "10:00 PM" and "11:00 PM" until the last which is "12:00 AM". This didn't strike my eye until I'd watched it a couple of times. Then I thought, "12:00 AM? Isn't that midday?" Yet it's obviously meant to be midnight when the fatal punch is/isn't thrown.

The advertisement ends with the text and voiceover which tells the viewer that the authorising party is the Government of Western Australia. I laughed at that and said, "So it's official; the government can't tell the time." I remembered that I'd also seen a bus timetable issued under the auspices of the Public Transport Authority of W.A. in which 12:00 midnight is colour-coded along with other times in the schedule to indicate that it's an "AM" time.

A lot of people seemed to be making this mistake when I started looking for it. Behind the all-purpose "twelve o'clock" or "midnight" or "midday" was a secret ignorance afflicting radio and television presenters, print journalists and every other kind of person who should know.

What they don't seem to get is that the Latin expressions for which AM and PM stand are describing time with respect to the progress of the sun across the sky. (Okay, we know that it's actually the progress of the sky past the sun, but the expression has its origins in the commonplace appearance of things, not Copernicanism.)

AM stands for ante meridiem and PM for post meridiem. This Wikipedia article goes into quite a bit of confused detail on the subject and the contributing editors have fallen into a trap in saying that the expression "12:00 AM" is "illogical". It's claimed there that the English translation of AM is "before noon". I'd say it's a misleading translation. To encompass the semantic content of the Latin phrase you would have to say "n th hour passed before noon". This means that you're counting the hours as they pass before noon. Thus: 1:00 AM is the first hour passed before noon; 2:00 AM is the second hour passed before noon and so on. 12:00 AM can then be clearly understood as telling us that that the twelfth hour before noon has passed. The PM times are then easily seen to be "hours passed after noon". No illogicality at all. (As Michael Gorey said to me in a comment on his blog a while back, Wikipedia is not always right. I should know, I've tried to contribute to it and given up in disgust.)

It's the little things like that which indicate a slippage in understanding of very basic things and a lack of fluency in our culture's use of its principal language. Like the endless battling on with "Two thous-and and..." every time the year is named instead of "Twenty-oh-whatever". Can these numb-nuts keep on all the way to the end of the century? I wouldn't bet against them.

Post#113: A New Type Of Wind Power: Residential Energy Ball

2009-01-16T15:01:00.002+09:00

A story Dugg from DIY-Renewable-Energy-dot-COM. Check out the video.

read more digg story

Post#112 People at the Edges (Bit Players in History)

2009-01-12T17:32:00.001+09:00

I was reading a post at The Girl Who Wished She Was Australian about former Australian Prime Minister, William McMahon, which prompted me to make a comment which I'll reproduce, in part, here:

"I remember a little bit about McMahon from my childhood. I have one enduring memory of him; a television newscast from the campaign for the election of 1972 that he lost to Gough Whitlam. In those days there were still large outdoor rallies to which anyone could turn up. These have disappeared in this country now and this is a good example of why: McMahon was about to give a speech from a platform and someone had organised a bouquet presentation. Two girls of about 6 years of age wearing white, lace-trimmed dresses, stepped forward to hand the large bouquet to McMahon as he stepped onto the platform. The crowd was, naturally, composed mostly of Labor supporters and a great groan and moan went up: "Ooaarr. Orrrr." It sounded as though they were watching someone eat something very unsavoury. As I understood it at the time they were expressing disgust with the girls for giving the bouquet to McMahon. I was pretty disgusted by that. Those kids had probably expected that it would be a pleasant event and their parents had dressed them in their best for the occasion. Only to be greeted by that. In the years since, I've realised that the crowd were probably expressing mock-revulsion at McMahon being allowed near the girls or abusing the adults who put the kids up to it. Still, I think it was probably a nasty experience for the kids and they wouldn't have taken it well at the time. "

As I was writing this I began to wonder about all those people who make peripheral appearances in history. Those two girls, for example. That was late 1972; 36 years and some months ago. They would both now be in their early forties if they are still in this world. I wonder where they are and whether they remember their big day out that took such a nasty turn.

On the subject of using children for political stunts, there's another episode which I remember with some disgust. In the 1990's there was a very vexatious public debate in Australia in response to the Mabo decision on Aboriginal land rights. The contesting factions included mining and pastoral interests which had sufficient funds to run expensive propaganda campaigns for their cause. Their purpose was, simply, to encourage anti-Aboriginal sentiment. These campaigns were cloaked in a pretence of moderation and fairness and were tuned to appeal to the baser aspects of human nature while appearing to speak in the voice of sweet reason.

On example of this was a glossy brochure which was delivered by letterbox-drop in my neighbourhood. On its front page was a photograph of four children standing in a line, each holding a cardboard square. On each square was written one letter of the word "MABO". The children had obviously been chosen as representative of racial and ethnic types. One was apparently of British ancestry, one was a dark-complexioned Caucasian and might have been any of several origins; Southern European, Indian, Arab. A third was East Asian, Chinese perhaps. And one was obviously an Australian Aboriginal. I was very surprised that any Aboriginal family would allow their child to be used as window-dressing for a campaign attacking their own ethnic group. Then I looked very closely at those cardboard squares. The letters in red on the white boards were not quite in the same tone as the other colours in the photograph. Very close but not quite. Then I spotted the explanation. The purveyors of this junk mail (And I do mean junk) were cunning but only half-clever. They had missed the fact that one of the children had a piece of red letter over the tips of his fingers. The children had been photgraphed holding blank white cards and the letters had been superimposed after the event. The parents of these kids had obviously not been told what the cards were going to spell out. They were probably booked through an agency, taken to the studio, photographed and sent on their way without explanation of the campaign's purpose. I assume a parent or authorised person accompanied them as they only appeared to be about ten years old at most. I never heard a word about anyone complaining. I had too much on my plate right then to try to stir up media interest so I let it go. I've wondered since what unknown furies and embarrassments this episode may have caused and what came of it all. Does the Aboriginal child know today how he was ill-used?

Another case of political exploitation of an individual's race was broadcast during the 1996 federal election campaign. The "minders" decided that they needed to smooth over John Howard's record on race relations. Eight years previously, Howard had expressed concern over the level of East Asian immigration to Australia. This led to a very lame stunt being performed at the election campaign launch for the Liberal party. As Howard left the hall after giving his campaign launch speech a woman rose from an aisle seat and interrupted his progress to hand him a large bouquet. She was of Mongoloid racial origins and was wearing what looked to me like a traditional Korean woman's costume. This was apparently supposed to prove that John Howard is not a racist and that Asians like John Howard. I know a little about the way these minders operate and I wouldn't be surprised if they'd lured some woman with a poor grasp of English and no idea of the history of the situation into playing this role. (I wouldn't even put it past them to have had a Caucasian woman made-up and dressed to look Asian. It wouldn't have been impossible to work such a scam; the Liberal party had complete control of the venue and could direct where any photography would be allowed and the camera was placed a fair distance from where the woman was sitting.)

It's intriguing to me that no-one interviewed the woman to expand on her views on the subject. Was she a loyal, Asian, Howard-loving Liberal who played her part by informed consent or was she a dupe? How does she feel about it now?

Another unknown bit-player is that man who anticipated Gough Whitlam's words on 11 November, 1975. ("A date which shall live in infamy", said Gough, wryly borrowing from Roosevelt.) On that day Gough spoke what he has, correctly, described as the most famous phrase in Australian political history. After the Governor General's secretary had read the proclamation dissolving Parliament and concluded with the exhortation "God save the Queen!!!", Gough stepped forward and made various comments to the crowd, including these words, written in fire in the memory of all of us who lived on that day and were old enough to take notice: "Well may we say 'God save the Queen', because NOTHING will save the Governor-General". Of course, it's obvious what he meant, but a strict reading of it shows that it's a non-sequitor as it stands. A proper expression of the sentiment would be, "Well may we say 'God save the Queen'. However, NOTHING shall save the Governor-General!"

I've seen the video-recording of this moment many times and, as with all very familiar things, your attention begins to drift to the peripheral details. A few years ago I noticed that Gough paused after saying "Queen". At that instant a man in the crowd shouted "God save Kerr!" (As in, "God help him if we catch him.") Then Gough spoke the mangled balance of the sentence. It's occurred to me that Gough was put off his grammatical stroke by the supportive interjector. Now, who was that anonymous voice? Does he live yet? Does he point out to his family or friends that his voice is to be heard on the soundtrack with Gough. Like the soldiers of Shakespeare's Henry V speech, does he strip his arms and show his scars of that Remembrance day? ("There be gentlemen in Melbourne who yet lie abed, will curse their luck that they were not here with us on this Dismissal Day.") I have stood on the very steps where Gough said those words and mimicked them to the amusement of a female friend. Only the two of us there on that Saturday in 1989 to share the joke. (Later someone set up a tour of the Old Parliament House where you could playact the roles of the protagonists and repeat their speeches.) O, wherefore art thou, interjector? If yet thou livest, come forth and claim thy mantle of glory!

Another rally with Gough, from the previous year, 1974, was the occasion for the can-throwing incident. Gough addressed a rally in my hometown, Perth, and was received with enthusiastic animosity by a large contingent of farmers who had come to town for the purpose thereof. One of them hurled a drink can (I think it was empty) which struck Gough (again, I think) on the side of his head. In those days drink cans were usually steel, not aluminium, although aluminium cans were beginning to appear. I don't think the thrower was ever caught. Perhaps he brags on "bopping Gough" to a select group of trusted persons.

In the field of rally-projectilers there is a somewhat less inglorious title to be claimed by the person who threw an egg at John Hewson in 1993. Hewson had attempted to revive the outdoor rally as an election event and encountered the same obstacles that had already killed it off once. At one of them he caught an egg which flew up from the crowd and called out, "That's the catch of the season!" At the other end of the egg's trajectory was a person who can say, "I threw the egg that Hewson caught."

And then, as Donald Rumsfeld put it, there are the "unknown unknowns". I can imagine one for you to show what that means. In the days when Alan Bond was being prosecuted for various matters, Paul Barry (then with the ABC) approached Bond as he was walking to court and said "Mr Bond, I'm Paul Barry from the ABC. Do you remember me, Mr Bond?" He handed Bond his business card as he said this. Bond calmly took the card, carefully placed it on the footpath and then ritually stamped upon it. As Bond turned and walked on, Barry followed, smiling and saying in a very pleasant and apparently delighted voice, "Ohh, so you do remember me Mr Bond." (At this time Bond was faking brain damage and memory loss for legal purposes.) Bond then turned and began shouting mock-hysterically (for the cameras) "Leave me alone! Leeeave mee alooone!!" It's a good yarn and I may return to it one day. For now, let's allow Paul and Alan to walk away from us down the path of history. Let's look back to where Bond stamped on the card. There it is, lying on the pavement with his shoeprint on it. What happens to it? That card is a Lost Treasure of Australian History. If only someone walking along behind would think to pick it up. Mounted in a nice frame it could attract a good price at a charity auction. Perhaps the National Archives or the National Library would like to have it. Or does it disappear with the rest of the debris of the footpath, disintegrating in a gutter or down a storm drain? Well, now that I've suggested it, it's a known unknown. Perhaps someone does have it tucked in their wallet and produces it at the pub as a conversation piece.

There are uncountable quantities of such curiosities and mysteries to be found, reaching all the way back to the deepest past of humanity. They spread out to touch all of us bit-players in history.

Post#111 Batman Returns (Urban myths and their origins)

2009-01-05T14:10:00.002+09:00

"Dinna-dinna-dinna-dinna-dinna-dinna-dinna-dinna-dinna-dinna-dinna-dinna-

BATMAAAN!"

Now that I've got that out of my system, I'll stipulate that this post really has nothing to do with the Batman comic books, television series or movies - but wait! - it has plenty to do with kinky sex!! (sort of...)

What prompted me to think of Batman was a story that has appeared in the media during the past two years concerning an incident of October 28th, 2006. The story, as always, was somewhat fragmented in the media reports. The gist of it is that a young woman named Nicola Jane Clunies-Ross was charged with conspiring to trap a boyfriend in her home and then assisting another boyfriend in violently and sexually abusing him. She has now been sentenced to 2 1/2 years prison (suspended, so effectively nothing). As far as I can make out from the tangled media versions, the mess originated with a combination of jealousy on the part of the other boyfriend and resentment by Clunies-Ross. This link to The Australian covers the basics of the story. More links can be found in this Google search. My view is that Gurdulic's "apology" in his suicide note for coercing Clunies-Ross is baloney and an attempt by him to give post-mortem assistance to her. I believe the jury should have stuck her on for "guilty" on all the charges and that she should have copped a minimum of ten years before parole. Quite a bit of the Internet comment on the topic is along the lines of "Lots of people pay for this kind of thing..." Of course, those who pay for it have some control over the process and its outcome.

The reason I mention this yarn is that, when reading about the scenario in which Clunies-Ross bound the victim and then opened the door for Gurdulic, I had a memory-flash that caused me to think, "All that's missing is Batman coming through the door..." The story is almost identical to one I heard in 1978 which was told to me as a joke. It goes like this:

"A bloke meets an attractive woman in a night club and she persuades him to go to a hotel with her and engage in some kinky sex. When they're in the hotel room she has him strip naked and binds his wrists and ankles to the bed-frame. She then prduces a roll of heavy adhesive tape from her handbag and gags him with it. After making sure the bindings are secure she smiles sweetly at him and leaves the room. He thinks he's going to be left for the maid to find and he's mighty vexed and embarrassed. Then he discovers things are worse than he thought. The door opens again...and a bloke wearing a Batman suit enters and does him over!"

Not a bad joke, as a joke. Then, five years later, I was talking with a work colleague who had just met a mutual acquaintance of ours who had joined the Western Australian police. This recently-minted cop had been telling him some good stories over a few beers. One of them was about a guy known as "Batman". Sure enough, it was the same story, except that the boy/girl bondage/rape team were allegedly real and working the clubs and pubs of Perth. The racconteur took a while to be convinced that our cop mate was either deluded himself or having him on. When you think about it, once you remove the suspension of disbelief which is usually granted to a joke, the story can't hold up. Perth had a small selection of nightspots in those days and someone trying to work the "Batman" scam repeatedly would soon encounter a previous victim or the word would get around so that any prospective new victim would quickly recognise the come-on and where it was leading. And the detail has to be considerably supplemented. Where is "Batman" supposed to be while the sucker is being bound? Perhaps in an adjoining room - he's not likely to be hanging around in the hotel corridor in his costume. Or we can change it slightly and have him hiding in a walk-in wardrobe or closet in the room where the trap is being sprung.

This is, I believe, how a lot of urban myths begin. A joke is misremembered or misheard as a true story; someone hears something while distracted or intoxicated and it later seems to have been told to them as a true story. Then imagination does the rest, smoothing out the implausibilities. "Where was Batman?" asks the skeptical listener. "Oh, he must have hidden in the closet", responds the improvising story-teller. After a few more recountings the story is polished enough to not immediately provoke scorn. Then it begins to seriously spread. It's also possible that someone deliberately translates a joke into a "true story" as mischief-making or just to impress a listener.

Somewhere in the five years between my first hearing the joke and its return as "reality", one of these two processes took place. The story of Clunies-Ross and her boyfriends indicates another aspect of the urban myth. The jokes that give birth to the myths may have a basis in reality. A real incident can provoke a joke on the same theme which is one day purveyed as fact.

Even now, someone may be turning the story of Clunies-Ross and her "police chick" costume into a joke which will return as a legend which may inspire some twit to actually try it and thereby generate a new wave of jokes...

Post#110 Mushroom Ragout Recipe from the Chef at Travian

2008-12-31T14:12:00.002+09:00

I cut and pasted the following recipe from the forum at Travian.com Australian Server 2. Travian caught my eye back in September when I saw that it was being widely advertised as the most popular browser-based strategy game. I've never had anyhting to do with this particular sort of Internet pastime so I decided to have a go. It's apparently played by people aged from seven to seventy and some people become quite addicted to it. If you have a couple of friends who can mind your account for you ("sitters" as they call it), you can play it fairly successfully without a lot of time being invested.

I saw this recipe posted on the forum by a player using the handle "Tylers". If you want to take him up on his invitation to respond you'll need to register to play on Australian Server 2 to access the forum.

"As most of you will know by now I am a Head Chef in a restaurant... and today I had to make the MOST amazing recipe I have ever tasted and I wanted to share it with you... it's cheap, quick and easy to make:

Mushroom Ragout (Serves 2)

Ingredients

-About 7-10 medium sized mushrooms (Any kind)
-Half a glass of white wine (Any kind)
-Thickening powder, if not then flour (Plain or corn)
-Some frying oil (Sunflower, rapeseed etc.)
-3 cloves of garlic
-300ml Fresh Double Cream
-Some rice or pasta etc. to accompany

Method:

1. Chop your onions and slice your mushrooms, put a saucepan of water on the boil for your rice/pasta.

2. Put about 3 tablespoons of oil into a frying pan and put your onions and mushrooms on until nice and golden brown.

3. Put your rice/pasta on the boil.

4. Put your fried up mushrooms and onions into a saucepan and add the cream (Stir regularly).

5. Add your garlic and as much of the wine as you like. If you like your food nice and rich, then add the whole half glass; if you only want a bit, just add a splash.

6. Leave it to simmer for 5-10 minutes whilst stirring it regularly.

7. Add some thikening powder/flour until the ragout sauce is the consitency of custard.

8. Plate up your rice and top it off with your ragout.

9. Grab a beer or a glass of wine and enjoy I really do emplore you to try this out... it is sooo nice!

Oh and by the way if you do make it then post your thoughts or possible additions or improvements to the recipe! - T"

Post#109 A kick in the Qaeda (How many words does the English language contain?)

2008-12-31T12:36:00.000+09:00

Last night I heard a BBC programme relayed through ABC NewsRadio. The crew were discussing someone's computer-generated prediction that in 2009 the vocabulary count for English would reach one million. As the guy being interviewed pointed out, the question is: How do you define "word"? He gave the example "is, are, was". I think it's fairly easy to accept that the various parts of verbs and plurals of nouns can be excluded. There's only one instance of "case" left in English, as far as I know; that's the personal pronouns, as in I, me, us, we, etc. That can get tricky, with argument about whether they rate as unique words, whether the old forms "thou" and "ye" and so on can still be counted. Then there's the issue of whether words of the type "my" and "mine" are genitive cases of pronouns or "possessive adjectives". I support the former view. Same goes for who and whom and myself. Pronouns all. The grammar-meddlers who say otherwise can visit the taxidermist for a good stuffing. Anyway, there are so few words in this category that we can ignore them in this context.

What is harder is dealing with words like "table". Apart from the furniture it denotes a collection of figures or words organised in a rectangular array for comparative or computational purposes. Unlike with "bear" the beast and "bear" the deed, these aren't completely separable etymologies with an accidental coincidence in modern spelling. The figurative use of "table" to describe the written data derives from the use of table-tops for ciphering and writing. I.e. actually writing on wood with chalk or drawing in sand spread on the table. So, are these two separate words or two connotations of one word? (Discuss in a ten-thousand word dissertation and have it on my desk by three-thirty p.m. on Monday.)

On firmer footing is the issue of loan-words. I think I've found an original slant on this. I've heard a lot of argument over many years about when a word imported from a foreign language is truly an English word. I think the easiest way to settle this bugbear is to apply a benchmark usage test. I'd propose that if a word can be understood by most randomly-chosen English-speakers that you say it to then it has become an English word. A good example is the vocabulary we've acquired from the Western Asiatic disturbances of the past thirty years. This includes ayatollah, fatwa, fedayeen, imam, jihad, madrassa, muezzin, mullah and mujahideen. Shahid (martyr) is probably familiar to people who take a particular interest.

"Allahu akbar" is a phrase which everybody on Earth has heard and which, if accepted as intelligible to most English-speakers, can now reasonably be called part of the English language. It's an example of a phrase which denotes a cultural context or can be used in a narrative. For example, if you're telling a story about a political rally or other event involving Muslims and you say or write, "The crowd were chanting 'Allahu akbar' ", you don't really need to explain its meaning. Having said that, I'll now dispute its meaning...

Although a phrase such as "Allahu akbar" can be understood in essence when translated into other words more familiar to English language speakers, there is a tendency to try to exoticise foreign-origin phrases or even to try to make them sound simplistic or awkward. This is, I suspect, to emphasise the weirdness of the foreign language or of the foreigners themselves. This is where translation occurs at a literal level without conveying a correct semantic impression. The usual translation given for "Allahu akbar" is "God is great" or "God is the greatest". This sounds to an English speaker like a rather crude choice of words; as though "God" was the name of a brand of cola drink. A more reverential tone would be struck by translating it as "The Lord is Supreme". A similar case is "Al Qaeda". This is usually translated as "the base". It may well be the word used in Arabic for "base" as in "base of operations" or "military base". However, to give a more significant and accurate translation to English, I feel that "foundation" is the right word, (even though there is another Arabic word meaning "foundation" as in a developmental institution). Thus, "Al Qaeda" would be "The Foundation".

To finish; an interesting example on these lines is the German word panzerkampfwagen. This is usually rendered as "tank" in English. The complete word can be comfortably translated as "armoured fighting vehicle." Someone wanting to make German look dopey could literally translate this as "panoplied struggle wagon". (That phrase reminds me of the embellished panel vans that Australian teenagers used during the 1970's and 80's for extra-domestic inter-gender relationship development. That's another story...)

Post#108 Christmas comes - just in time to beat Easter! (Commercialism and holidays)

2008-12-18T14:26:00.003+09:00

I can't be sure when it started, but I think it's been in the past decade that the retailers began jumping on the holiday bandwagons much earlier than most people think reasonable. I first spotted Christmas decorations and seasonal foods on sale this year at Woolworths in Centro Dianella in the early days of October. Other retailers soon followed.

The remnants of the left-over Easter eggs had barely been sold off at gross discounts before their place was taken by the Christmas goods. Those Easter chocolates now include a great range of chocolate rabbits and the battling Easter bilby. (Click that, scroll down and you'll see a cute furry animal and two humans nearly throttling it. And here for a better view of the furry beast). These left-overs are often partially crushed/melted and are the wounded debris of the last days of pre-public-holiday shopping. Their metallic paper wrappers are usually dented like a depressed-fracture of the skull and they are about the most pitiful-looking stuff to ever hit the remainder shelves. Only a few years ago they were disposed of more discreetly, now they're shamelessly flogged.

(Alston, the cartoonist for The West Australian, has done a couple of good cartoons on this in recent years. In the first he shows the Easter Bunny riding with Santa Claus in his sleigh and saying "Thanks for the lift, mate. Joining forces is a good idea in the current economic climate." In the next year's the Bunny was being unpleasant, abusing a tardy Santa in a store: "Come on, you lazy old bastard, get a move on! It's my turn!")

Woolworths has a nauseating jingle they keep playing over their speaker system that contains the phrase "We're Woolworths the fresh food people". This is sung as, "Ther freshh fooood pee-pullll" in an unctuous and conceited tone by the sorts of voices you hear in jingles. All so loving and sweet. I loathe the blasted thing. A few weeks back I was in their Dianella store with a female friend and I busted out singing my own take on it: "We're Woolworths the greeeedy baaastaards and we're ripping you off! we're ripping you off!! we're ripping you off todaaay!!!" She joined in and a couple of other people chimed in as well in the aisle we were in. Other people in other aisles could be heard laughing. Then security was called for over the speakers and a couple of people prowled the aisles looking for the "offenders". They didn't have a clue who'd done it so I approached one of these twits and told her that it was a couple of bikies who'd just gone out the exit lane. They lost interest at that point. I couldn't believe it at the time, but in retrospect it was only to be expected. They're allowed to sing irritating songs to you. You can't reciprocate.

IGA at Dianella also has a cold eye and a hard jaw. Once, in IGA, I saw a store employee clearing the bakery shelves and chucking the unsold bread, cakes, etc. into a trolley very roughly. I asked her, "Does this all go to the tip?" She replied that it did. Baker's Delight at Dianella gives their daily surplus to charity workers who collect it at the end of business. I mentioned this and asked why IGA didn't do the same. She said, with some disgust, "I know; we've suggested it to the management here, but they don't want to know." Yep, they're all great lovers of humanity and full of generous spirit.

These two festivals, Christmas and Easter, bookend important sales phases in the business calendar and Jesus is the last thing on their minds. I've often thought we should bring back the pagan gods for these sorts of events. They liked a good booze up and cutting a deal or two. No-one had to pretend they were in it for love and self-improvement. We don't really have to believe in them, they can just be useful commercial vehicles. And there are so many of them. They'd fill the calendar. Actually, maybe I could sell that idea for something...

Post#107 "Wow, Enceladus!" (A story Dugg from the blog "The Bad Astronomer")

2008-12-16T13:03:00.002+09:00

The Bad Astronomer discusses new Cassini images of Enceladus, a tiny water-ice moon orbiting Saturn: "...water and organic materials, and a known mechanism (tidal heating) to keep the water liquid, and to help mix it. Provocative, isn’t it?" Check them out!

read more digg story

Post#106 Patriotic Squandering (The Australian Government's Economic Stimulus Package for 2008)

2008-12-11T14:15:00.004+09:00

I couldn't really take in what was happening until a few days ago. Then it got through to me that the Commonwealth Government was giving money away. Just giving it away. And the only squawk from their so-called Opposition was that some people would spend it on booze, gambling, drugs and whores and that others would just sit on it as savings. Apart from what I think of the idea in general, I think these are just the same sort of nit-picking nonsenses that Malcolm Turnbull is making into a standard practice. The money that is saved by being banked is ultimately providing capital for loans and the vice industries are just as real a part of the economy as a delicatessen or retailer of vacuum-cleaners.

My exasperation with it is because the government has found over a thousand million dollars to spend on a scattergun subsidy rather than thinking about investing in a long-term restructure. A good starting point would be the banking and housing sectors. That's where the current furore began and it would be a good place to begin with repairing the system.

The Road to Housing Hell

The perennial treadmill with these two sectors is the rent-trap into which prospective buyers are forced as they attempt to save to purchase a home. Those savings are eroded as the landlords attempt to extract maximum profit from the rental properties. At the same time, the prices of homes for sale also rise, as the vendors attempt to make the greatest possible return on their capital.

The rent-slaves don't like their servitude and respond by trying to increase their incomes. Those employed by others seek higher wages, those who own businesses raise the prices charged to their customers and/or try to cut their costs. One of the cost-cutting measures may be shedding staff; trying to do the same or more with less. Some of those shed will be those rent-trappped ones trying to get money together for a home purchase. So there's a stimulus right there to inflation and unemployment. What happens to the unemployed who can't find new employment quickly? The landlord still wants that rent and if they can't continue to meet it they're out, looking for cheaper accommodation.

These are complex issues, and complicated. I have heard people say that they prefer renting to owning their own home but those people seem likely to be in a very small minority, so these stresses will affect most people in the developed world.

Housing has become a focus for those who study the economic indicators. The figures for new construction commencements are scrutinised fiercely each quarter and the progress of prices is tracked breathlessly in the financial media. I see in this a main feature of the problem. The fundamental purpose of housing construction must be...to provide housing. Not to provide incomes to constructors, realtors, conveyancers, landlords and speculators. Nor to housing industry analysts. This is the same malaise that afflicts money markets. When currency becomes primarily a speculative commodity the price of it ceases to have any relevance to the real-world value of what is being marketed. Money should be valued according to what can be bought with it, housing should be valued according to the quantity and quality of the work and materials applied to the construction and the utility of the site.

(More to follow...)

Post#105 Murder Two - And Some Rapes (Fatal Choices by Female Crime Victims.)

2008-12-09T18:24:00.004+09:00

It is a truism familiar to law officers and connoiseurs of crime that most crimes against women are committed in their own homes by men who are closely asociated with the victim. When any woman turns up dead or suspectly missing, the police searchlight swings around seeking the (usually estranged) husband, boyfriend, father, brother, son, etc. That is, unless there is a self-evident circumstance that indicates a different class of offender.

In any interview with a "dial-a-quote" type on the topic of women and crime there's now a mandatory phase in which the expert informs the audience that women are in most danger from their own "friends" and family. It's become a commonplace datum which most people are aware of due to dint of repetition. The usual focus of the argument is that fictional accounts of crime are weighted in favour of depicting "stranger danger" because it provides better material for creating dramatic tension.

I don't contest any of that, but it still leaves a large body of crime that is committed against women by strangers. I've observed a pattern in these events that is an ironic and tragic counterpoint to the threat from one's familiars. Again and again I read accounts of women raped and /or killed in a repeating scenario which I call Fatal Error Number One or "The Angry Girl Storms Out".

An example which is close to hand is the case of the 1963 murder of Rosemary Anderson in Perth, W.A. The prelude to her death was a horribly trivial tiff over a piece of fried fish. While visiting her boyfriend she tried to pilfer a piece of battered fish from his plate. He, seeing a hand sneaking into view, mistook it for the hand of his younger brother and snarled, "Get your own!" in a very savage tone of voice. Rosemary was appalled by the cruel response to this bit of mischief and gathered her gear and left the house in a distressed state. According to John Button, her boyfriend who was later wrongfully convicted in the matter, Rosemary had done this before when affronted and was impervious to reason when angered. She set out to walk home and was the victim of vehicular homicide by Eric Cooke. John had followed her in his car hoping that she would cool off and allow him to drive her home. It was during an interlude when she was out of his sight that Cooke ran her down with a stolen car. This case is definitively covered in Estelle Blackburn's books Broken Lives and The End of Innocence and John Button's work Why Me, O Lord!

Another famous case in W.A. is the rape and murder of Anne Zappelli in 1969. She was at a drive-in theatre in Geraldton when she became bored or irritated and decided to leave her friends in their car and...walk home. A man later made a death-bed confession; there's a link to an ABC story about it here.

An episode that caught my attention was a brutal rape that occurred in Perth in the early hours of New Year's Day in 1993. A young woman took a taxi home from celebrating the New Year and asked the driver to let her disembark at a corner a short distance from her home. According to the taxi-driver, a man walked by as she left the car and she called out "Happy New Year!" to this passerby. He didn't respond. She was later found unconscious in an alley; severely beaten, raped, her clothes torn to bits and her shoes missing. When she was able to speak, she alleged that the passerby she'd greeted was the offender. I never heard further on this case after the initial report. I have no idea whether he was caught but I do know this to be an example of Fatal Error Number Two or "The Girl Snatches Peril From The Jaws Of Safety". In this scenario simple impatience or penny-pinching or not wanting to impose or some other such exasperatingly trivial impulse leads to horrible consequences. A short-cut through a car-park, a playing field, a poorly-lit laneway. Saving a bus or taxi fare. Not waiting for that friend to provide a ride home. Not wanting to take someone a kilometre out of their way.

Again and again the stories appear. Women fleeing the safety of their friends' company and delivering themselves into the hands of monsters. Women unwittingly taking grave risks for petty reasons. "Reclaim the night!" Sure. Call me when it happens. Until then, I wish I could scream in the ears of all those who may make these errors: "Don't! Don't! For Christ's sake, DON'T!!" As a less histrionic aid I'd advise any young woman to find a copy of Gavin de Becker's book The Gift of Fear and recommend that they read it twice and be prepared to answer questions. The answers could save their lives.

Post#104 Murder One: Lesbian Vampire Killers and Their Unjust Deserts (Western Australian Murders and Penalties)

2008-12-08T14:14:00.012+09:00

The notorious case of Jessica Stasinowsky and Valerie Parashumti has notched up another milestone. The inevitable appeals alleging harshness of sentence are now appearing in the court lists. The lovely Valerie Parashumti has stuck first with an application for reduction of sentence. Her barrister has argued to the Appeal division of the Supreme Court of Western Australian that the sentences imposed earlier this year were excessive. This is a standard part of the cycle of such cases and usually makes the average person wonder what kind of maggot-nest a criminal defence lawyer must have for a brain. However, although it's a familiar routine and I've become used to it, a note was struck in the report of the plea on Parashumti's behalf that staggered me. The defence advocate has contended that the offence in this matter was not in the worst category.

This genius of the forensic arts proposed that the most serious categories of murder are those involving assassinations of public officials such as judges or police officers. So, a bullet in the back of the head to one of these, is worth a more serious sentence than the deeds of the two offenders in this matter. This really is a provocation.

The problem we have in these islands is that we've seen the removal of the death penalty as a standard penalty for wilful homicide. This was done at the discretion of politicians with no plebiscite and without the matter being contested in the context of an election campaign. It was slipped in under the radar by MP's who believed that they knew better than the bloodthirsty canaille. Now judges are obliged to try to grade murders and reserve the longest sentences for the worst. The trap in this is that there is never going to be a "worst" murder. There's no bottom with these offences; whatever one may imagine, there will always be a worse. Under the old system, a life deliberately taken was worth a life. It still is. The law simply doesn't recognise the fact.

The other significant issue in this case is the familiarity which the gruesome subject matter is acquiring. We had another murder in this State shortly before this one which was of a similar style; two teenage girls murdered another girl in a shared house in the town of Collie. These were the sorts of killings which would have been beyond imagining in WA thirty years ago. Now they're forming a pattern.

Whenever the accused and their friends appear at the courthouse the casual observer could mistake the gathering for a convention of fans of the vampire movie genre. I may be overestimating it, but there seem to be a lot more of these vampire lesbians around these days. The curmudgeons who keep railing against the decadent influence of the entertainment industry used to attract barrages of derision from the "progressives" who kept insisting that fantasy and reality had no causal connection and that someone could immerse themselves in as much horror and violence as they pleased with no ill-effects. The evidence for the righteousness of the curmudgeons appears to be accumulating.

Post#103 Fomalhaut Planet

2008-12-01T17:44:00.002+09:00

A while back I saw a news item about the discovery of a visible planet orbiting the star Fomalhaut. Television news showed a brief video clip simulating the planet's orbit. It seems to be following an eccentric orbit around the star and approaching quite close to the star. It's not a plausible candidate for supporting life of any kind but it should finally settle the hash of any remotely sane skeptic on the topic of the existence of planets outside our solar system. That is, if all the gravity-distortion data hasn't convinced them already.

It was only a few years ago that there were astronomers seriously proposing that our solar system may be the only one in the universe with planets or that ever has or will have them. How anyone could be that far into solipsism beats me from here to Brisbane. Was it ever remotely likely that in all of space and time our star system was so defiantly unique? As a hypothesis it really should have been relegated to the category of the infinitesimally probable during the nineteenth century.

I don't put much stock in the prospect of aliens pestering us in the recent past or future but I think it would be ill-advised on the same scale as the "no other planets" hypothesis to hold to an absolute denial of their existence. Of course, most other life in the universe will be of the sort which existed hundreds of millions of years ago on this planet. Other types may have progressed in a more benevolent star's orbit, where the extinction events which have disrupted the history of our planet may not have occurred. This could put them ahead of us intellectually and technologically. Of course, Nature being capricious, a planet which has been subjected to great plagues of extinction events may be harbouring a supremely adaptive and relentless species which is just about to take over the Universe. (In which case, let me be the first to welcome our new overlords.)

I was reflecting today on the indifference of these facts of Universal life to our opinions and perceptions. These alien planets have been there through all of recorded history and well before it. If they are trees in the Galactic forest, no human observer has been required to permit their growth or fall to occur. And there are probably wonders and mysteries out there which we may come and go without ever knowing or even imagining the existence of.

Post#102 An thou bloggest, thus shall it be... + Blogsoldiers!! Abandon ship!

2008-11-25T15:05:00.001+09:00

I started at Post#2 by saying:

"In olden days they used to say, "Hire a hall if you want to make a speech!" Now it's "Start a blog!" People should be careful about saying it. The recipient of the advice might take heed and do just that. But what to blog about? There's everything and nothing. Let's have a bit of everything to start:"

And, so I started. The "Hire a Hall" series of rants and raves were subtitled to show them as part of the categories "Everything" and "Nothing". By that I meant to separate the topics into the great and the trivial. Looking back, I see that hardly anything made its way into "Nothing". Most apparently trivial things lead back to the great issues of life. This is something the makers of parables have known forever. Jesus, or whoever wrote his material, applied it all the time. There's probably some arcane Classical Greek rhetorical term for this type of exposition. Something meaning "arguing from the particular to the general". In fact I'm sure there is; I just can't think of it. So, I've decided to dispense with the "Hire a Hall" device and title the posts with whatever seems fit.

One thing I've noticed in roaming the steppes of blogdom since April is that a large number of blogs are moribund. People start with a burst of whatever it is that starts them and fizzle out. The blog servers must be strewn with the wreckage of millions of withered blogs that people gave up. The most plausible reason is an apparent lack of readership. The counterpoint to this is all the blogs urging other bloggers to "monetise" their blogs. Hub sites like BlogCatalog, MyBlogLog and Spicypage are full of spruiking on this topic. These are the efforts of people hoping to make money by blogging to other people about how to make money by blogging to other people... The revenue stream is apparently supposed to come from the advertisements on the site which will be clicked by the millions of visitors you'll receive. Just send a payment to this account and you'll learn the secret. I find it a bit sad; it's just like those gambling/real estate/whatever schemes that are offered by post or email. The anomaly is: if the sender knows the secret to becoming filthy rich, why are they bothering to fiddle around with a mail-order business? If they're doing it for love of humanity, why don't they just post it publicly once, for free?

I can think of plenty of ways of attracting visitors. Most are common sense and are given away as free advice by the "traffic ehancement" experts as a tease for the potential customers. They're also superficial. They attract people to blogs but usually don't entice anyone to actually read the damn things. Tricky titles for posts, leaving comments on other people's blogs, including images in posts; they're well-worn features of the blog culture.

Then there are traffic exchanges. These are sites where you receive credit points for visiting member's blogs and receive reciprocal visits according to how much credit you have acquired. The same problem afflicts this concept as with much of bloggery; people want others to visit their blogs and read their writings and click on their ads...they're not all that keen on being the readers and clickers. An economic model of this pattern would feature many sellers and few buyers. Even though these sites usually have timers that require you to access a blog for a minimum period, many people seem to simply open the site, reduce the window to a size just big enough for the navigation controls to be visible and then just click on it occasionally as they do something else. So they can't even see the blog sites they're "visiting". Several of these sites also are poisoned by bad management by the site owners. They want to receive income from paying members and don't look after the non-paying accounts to a degree that would encourage them to upgrade. I had this experience at Blogsoldiers which was, unfortunately for me, the first such site I tried. I didn't know enough at that stage to recognise the signs of a dying site and I wasted a lot of time on it that would have been better spent elsewhere. The main indicator that I should have spotted is that a lot of the blogs on the site had not been updated for a long time. Their existing credits were slowly being eroded by the small remaining community of users. Having jumped on a sinking ship I paddled away for several weeks acquiring useless credits by surfing blogs which would never provide me with any traffic. This happened in the period when i was waiting for my blog to be listed. This took about three weeks and, when it happened, amazed me with the lack of result it produced. I currently have 248 credits remaining which I'm allowing to run down to nil before I delete my account there. If you're reading this blog from Blogsoldiers you must be one of the fifty or so regulars there who still haven't jumped. I recommend you do so and join me at Blogexplosion, where things are a lot more lively. The rule I follow when surfing is to at least have a look at every site I visit and scroll down and see what the general quality of the posting is. I blogmark any that attract my attention in a positive way. I figure that the exchange traffic concept is a bit like speed dating. If you discover one blog in fifty that you'd like to read and there's a prospect of developing a correspondence with its author, you're doing well.

Post#101 Want To Be PC? - It's Easy As ABC!

2008-11-24T16:10:00.007+09:00

I usually break out the flamethrowers to defend the Australian Broadcasting Corporation from the yellow cringing dogs of the Right (aaak- ptooey), but last night I heard something that wore even my Socialist patience out. A presenter on ABC Regional Radio was conducting a session in which listeners were attempting to answer each other's questions on the meaning of various sayings. One of the topics of discussion was the origin and meaning of the American phrase "Jim Crow". A listener, who had a timid manner to begin with, offered a quote from an American author which she prefaced by saying, "Now I'm quoting here, this isn't my choice of words.."

It turned out that the quote referred to racism in the USA and, inter alia, the epithet "nigger" was cited. The presenter interjected sternly, "I really wish you hadn't used that word...", further intimidating the caller. I busted out at that point with a few epithets of my own. I know that the word is as dangerous as nitroglycerine in the US. Media types there are cowed to the extent that they now use the expression "The N-word". Not without reason. For a white person who has any aspirations, to use the word "nigger" in any context is career suicide. A few years back a senior executive in a corporation there destroyed himself by unthinkingly using the expression "nigger in the woodpile" during a press conference. That's an ironic turn of events because that expression derives from the activities of the Abolitionists who ran the Underground Railway for absconding slaves. One of their tricks was to build hideouts for the slaves which would be concealed under a pile of firewood. Most people today seem to think that it means some kind of obnoxious intrusion, as with "fly in the ointment"; it actually denotes a dangerous secret, like "skeleton in the closet".

Lots of these sayings float around in the background of cultural memory and pass unnoticed until they're brought out carelessly into the unkind light of a politically correct day. The old version of "Eenie , meenie, minie, moe.." used when I was a child, contained the line "Catch a nigger by the toe!" Kids learned that by rote and didn't even know what "nigger" meant. If someone had bailed me up on that at the age of four and said "What is a nigger?", I couldn't have said whether it was animal, vegetable or mineral; real or mythical. I know what it means now. I know what goes with that word: Redlegs, Jayhawkers, Copperheads, Abolitionists, "Burning Kansas" (and Lawrence thereof), Quantrell's Raiders, Andersonville, Chickamauga, Gettysburg, Shiloh and on and on. And then Reconstruction and the Ku Klux Klan. That word "nigger" is soaked in blood and hate. It's been spat from the mouths of men who've hauled other men up into trees with rope necklaces or dragged them, first behind horses and wagons, then Model A Fords and more recently 4x4 pickup trucks. It's been the last word heard in this world by the ears of men being flogged on a tree or tied to a burning log or hearing also the blast of close-range gunfire or the whoomp of a firebomb.

When I grew older I discovered that I was a distant relative by marriage of Ulysses Grant and that members of my father's family live still in the United States, cousins whose names and numbers I can't even guess at. Some of their kin and mine are no doubt buried in those cemeteries that contain the tens of thousands of dead from those battles. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, those great slave-driving freedom fighters, bequeathed that also with their slave Constitution. And still it goes on. I read an article in the Weekend Australian's magazine a couple of months back (when Hillary was a contender and Sarah wasn't) in which a redneck customer in a gun shop was quoted saying, "I ain't votin' for no woman and I ain't votin' for no nigger." I suppose if he kept his word he must have refrained from voting. (Praise the Lord!) Nor should we forget Mr Rodney King and his eponymous riot. "Why can't we all just get along?" he asked. Good question. Perhaps when the aliens arrive they'll tell us what it's all about. Or the AntiChrist will. Or the real Christ. Or not.

In the meantime (mean time), we battle on fighting the bushfire of bigotry, flame by flame. Perhaps that's what that twit of a presenter thought he was doing when he chided the caller for saying "nigger". I wouldn't choose to use that word about anyone. In the context of addressing someone with it or calling them by it behind their back, I surely don't want to hear it on the national broadcaster. But really, mate. Complaining because someone referred to it in the context of a discussion about racial discrimination? Being that silly just puts fuel in the tank of the likes of Janet Albrechtsen.

Post#100 "Jelly balls" may slow global warming - A story from the Sydney Morning Herald via Digg.

2008-11-18T14:39:00.003+09:00

VAST numbers of marine "jelly balls" now appearing off the Australian east coast could be part of the planet's mechanism for combating global warming...

(Refers to the salp, an obscure invertebrate which soaks up CO2.)

read more | digg story

Post#99 George Bush Proves That Imran Khan is Right!

2008-11-17T17:33:00.004+09:00

I haven't bothered to pay a lot of attention to the story about the leaking of Kevin Rudd's telephone conversation with George Bush, but I gather this is the gist of it:

George Bush spoke to Kevin Rudd by telephone when Rudd was at Kirribilli House and was entertaining some media folk. The Australian subsequently published a story claiming that Rudd had said to Bush that a meeting of the G20 to discuss the economic crisis would be a good idea. Bush is supposed to have responded with a puzzled "What's that?" This apparently indicated that he didn't know what the G20 was, not that he hadn't heard correctly. Now, the White house spokespersons denied this "angrily", and the US Ambassador to Australia made some representations.

Mr Rudd issued a statement to the effect that Mr Bush had not spoken those words and thereafter clammed up, basically referring to the US authorities in a "what they said" manner. Mr Rudd also repeatedly insisted that this non-existent faux would not affect US-Australian realtions, or his personal dealings with the US.

Here's the anomaly: If it didn't happen, and Mr Rudd never claimed that it did, what was there for anyone to be angry about or make representions about? The final proof that it must have happened is the calculatedly unfriendly reception that Mr Rudd received from Mr Bush at the G20 summit. Bush seemed to be deliberately lavishing affection on everybody else to emphasise the minimalist greeting which Rudd received. So if it's all just the imaginings of malicious journalists, why is Bush so offended?

By snubbing Rudd he's proven the tale true. Which brings me to Imran Khan. When Andrew Denton interviewed him recently on Enough Rope he asked Khan to describe George Bush in three words. Khan replied, with exquisite moderation, "He is not very clever."

Post#98 Hire a Hall / Everything (The Wheel of Fortune)

2008-11-13T18:27:00.004+09:00

I've just read The Pinstriped Prison by Lisa Pryor. It has a refreshingly clear style and is a much easier read than many works on "lifestyle". It provoked this response from fellow Perth blogger Sunili. It was seeing this post which inclined me to read it.

Pryor's work is an interesting attempt to describe and explain the way in which a small group of professions have managed to acquire elite status in the minds of aspiring students. They now lure the cream of the intellectual crop of graduates from high schools into preparatory degrees and also, subsequently, from other degree courses with no apparent relationship to the professions in question. The most impressive point that Pryor makes is that these three "glamorous" professions; management consultancy, law and banking are absorbing those who have particular talents which suit them to other professions which are subsequently impoverished for talent as a consequence. The graduates are attracted by the money and the verbose and deceptive promises of "dynamic" and exhilarating endeavours. The truth turns out to be that grunt work in glamorous professions is still grunt work. It's just intellectually harder. Wracking your brains over a client's tax position or corporate structure is really no more fun than laying cement. And none of it really breaks ground in advancing civilisation.

I found particularly resonant the description of how expenditure expands to absorb available income. I've experienced and observed this myself. I once held a middle-range position in an organisation in which the CEO didn't seem to have much more disposable income than I did. He was spending it at the same rate as he received it by keeping up the appropriate lifestyle.

On the other hand, things can be worse. I've also read Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in Working Class America. The author went "undercover" as a seeker of employment as an unskilled labourer. (She discovered inter alia that no job is truly "unskilled".) The cruelty of the plight of those who are trapped in this stratum of society is very thoroughly demonstrated. The two issues are brought neatly together in Lewis Lapham's documentary The American Ruling Class which has featured on SBS in Australia.

What it comes down to, I believe, is that the "system" industries of capitalism are providing massive earnings to those who control the corporations that grease the wheels for short-term profit to be made. They need wage-slaves for their mills and this provides the impetus for the intense recruitment drive to the consulting, legal and banking industries.

The long-term effect is the devaluing of those who would make the constructive changes in technology and provide high-quality social services. Thus industrial design, architecture, teaching, nursing, etc. are driven down towards the base of the status pyramid. Those who might have once aspired to these professions see that they don't get no respect and that they're shortchanged on pay whenever those paying can manage to do it. It's a vicious circle in which the recipient of the service is treated to the efforts of a progressively dumbed-down workforce. In teamwork situations, the poorly-trained, unmotivated operators also wear out the patience and morale of their colleagues who want to do better. Guess which ones drop out in disgust.

Post #97 Tapping in and washered out.

2008-11-10T14:42:00.002+09:00

Last night I gave up on strangling the taps in the shower to stop their insidious dripping and accepted that it was time to try the washers I'd bought. These are a new type with a recess in them to use the water pressure to buttress against itself. They're made by Doust Plumbing Products, a firm operating out of my home town, Perth, Western Australia.

Here's a link to the page on their site which explains how they work.

I found they worked pretty well but I'm having to turn the taps off harder than I expected. I'm wondering whether it's that the tap needs reseating or the newfangled washer is not up to the contents of the blurb. Time will tell.

Post#96 Hire a Hall / Everything (A rack o' bamab? Rack off Obama!!)

2008-11-07T13:37:00.002+09:00

(Not that I've got anything in particular against him, but I can't turn on a radio or television or read a newspaper or a blog without having him for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The trend in Australia is to pronounce all the a's in his name to rhyme as "ah" and run it together, thus: "Bahrahkohbahmah". The commentators are busting a gut trying to fit it in as many times as possible in any utterance. Perhaps it's easier to say if it rhymes. I swore a blood oath on the altar of Mars that I wouldn't blog about him yesterday and I managed to refrain from joining the stampede. Sufficient unto the day was the blogging thereof...but today's another day. I think I've found an angle on this that's actually new, so here goes.)

I proved again that I won't be joining the ranks of "earning" psychics by expressing preference for a McCain victory in my Post#2, whereat I wrote:

"The US presidential election? I don't make any pretence about it; I'm well to the left of the Australian Labor Party these days. So, if I was a US citizen, who would I vote for? Clinton or Obama? John McCain. Yes, that's strange on the face of it, but true. The history books may well show the old white guy defeating the first plausible female candidate or the first black guy with a real chance. No doubt the future will judge it to be a reversion to type. Perhaps the last gasp of the old right guard. They'll be wrong. It'll be a victory for common sense. The only "qualification" the other two have is a desperate thirst to get their hands on the controls at any price. I hope not."

I wouldn't change a word of that. The intensity of preoccupation with Obama's ethnicity is the most prominent fact of this episode in history and it prompts me to propose that an interesting inversion has occurred. If I'd thought of it I'd have asked the question, "Would you vote for Obama if he was white?" A quick look in the Googlebox shows that some people did. But not very many. Now that the American electors have got it out of their systems and elected a "black" President, what does the cold light of the next morning reveal? An unknown quantity. I'm sure he's not a cryptoMuslim, soft on terrorism or a secret hater of America. But those weren't very plausible accusations, so refuting them doesn't really win many points. More dangerous and plausible is the possibility that he's overambitious and out of his depth.

On the SBS Dateline programme broadcast on the day of the election I saw George Negus ask an American commentator, "What will his first mistake be?" George didn't get an answer to that. But it's coming, nonetheless.

Post #95 Anagrams of a Mabo

2008-11-03T16:08:00.003+09:00

A long time ago in that past which is another country; before Al Kyder and his mate Terry Wrist hung a shingle outside a cave in Afghanistan; before the infamous Israeli agent Lewinsky infellatrated her way into the White House*; back in the days when most people didn't have mobile phones; there lived a man named Eddie Koiki Mabo. And for a while his name was one of the most recognisable in the Commonwealth of Australia. I hadn't thought about him in a long while when I noticed that Obama spelt backwards is "a Mabo". No real connection of course, just a string of letters that prompted a memory. Synchronicity did her trick and provided an episode of First Australians about him last night, just to let me know She's still messing with me and that I shouldn't become complacent.

In 1992, most Australians heard of him for the first time when the High Court found in his favour in a case which became known simply as "Mabo". (It was a posthumous victory; like Moses he had died shortly before the Promised Land was opened for business.) It was the decision which established the principle that indigenous title may endure in Australia. It had all begun in a rather trivial dispute between Mabo and another native of Mer island, named Dipoma, about ownership of a small piece of land...the explosive finding on native title was a mere byproduct of this dispute. Mabo and Dipoma had been feuding for a long while over it and I heard a letter Mabo had written quoted in a TV documentary, in which he wrote, "Dear Mr Dipoma: Your letters are full of what drops off in the toilet after a good feed..." First change the world, then get down to the serious business. The decision has been the subject of so much blathering argument by spoken word and pen that I won't bother writing more on its technicalities. I find it thought-provoking for the ironies it embodies. One hundred and four years had passed since the beginning of the British Conquest of Australia. The highest of our courts had now decided that customary genealogical inheritance of land title applied in Australia, just as in Europe. Not a bad effort, really. The Vatican took much longer to concede on Galileo.

And what did it do for Aborigines in the world outside jurisprudence? Next to nothing. Just like the 1967 referendum everyone drags up, or the efforts of the tragically misguided Vincent Lingiari. He led a "successful" campaign to obtain the right to equal pay for equal work for Aboriginal workers in the pastoral industry. Without a right to security of tenure of employment or residency on the stations where they lived. Without a law preventing racial discrimination in the giving of employment. The station owners expelled the Aboriginal communities and started them on their long path to degradation as unemployed fringe-dwellers. The helpful government gave them "sit-down money" to buy the alcohol they needed for this strenuous work. They're at it to this day. But the government's coming to help them again, so they'll be alright.

Another great victory for the cause was the appointment of an Aborignal man, Douglas Nicholls, as Governor of South Australia. Everybody now forgets that he nearly renounced the position within a few days of the government announcing its intentions. He was grievously offended by the media's disrespectful harping on his ethnicity. Their approach was, essentially, to repeatedly challenge him as to whether he did not find it a wonder of the world that he was to be appointed. There was a nasty racist undertone to this: "Aren't you as amazed as us that a boong is to be Governor?" Not that "boong" was spoken. He didn't fail to hear it, though, and he was right. I remember with disgust the media pack trampling his rose bushes as they swarmed into his front yard, ignoring his furious demands that they depart, bleating their taunts. They'd never have dared it with a white pastor.

So, who said, "Change we can believe in?"

(*Oops!! Gave away an international security secret there. Well, it was a long time ago. Maybe it won't matter...)

Post#94 "Interview on Writing Fiction Books" - Dugg from CuteWriting

2008-10-20T17:18:00.002+08:00

"Author Carol Denbow on virtual tour teaching how to write and publish a book."

From a post at CuteWriting by Lenin Nair which I Dugg.

read more | digg story

Post#93 Hire a Hall/Everything (It's Payback Time for the Liberal and National Coalition!)

2008-10-20T13:17:00.006+08:00

Now that the dust is settling from the W.A. State election of September 6th, the outlines are emerging of where the new government is going to be staking its claim to power. In the West Australian newspaper a couple of days ago I read a report of the intention of some Liberal backbenchers to revisit the issue of compulsory balloting. Yeah, sure, backbenchers. Just bringing up a matter of personal concern. Just like those Dorothy Dixer questions that backbenchers ask all on their own initiative. One of these concerned fellows is the recently scraped-in new MLA for Riverton, Mr Mike Nahan, a thirty-year refugee from North America. He found a nice little niche advising Richard Court, former Liberal Premier of W.A. and then moved, after Court's ouster, to the Institute of Public Affairs. Here's a reader's comment copied from the PerthNow website where Nahan's election spiel was posted

Dr Mike Nahan was the Executive Director of the extreme right wing "privatise at all costs" Institute for Public Affairs for ten years. Mike chooses not to mention this in his CV. Why is that? He supports the "astroturf" environmental front group the Australian Environmental Foundation, which has a base case of denying climate change, whether it is human induced or not.

Can't find anything to disagree with in that. Nahan's mates at the IPA have a relentlessly Thatcherite view. It's free-market anarchy that they preach; their idea of economic Paradise is located at the point on the eternal wheel of ideas where the lunar left and the lunar right meet. Karl Marx wrote of the "withering away of the organs of the State". Nahan and Co. want to cut off those organs with chainsaws. They bleat like the brainwashed sheep from Animal Farm: "Private good! Government bad!" The facts of private ignorance, corruption, incompetence, indifference to the future and so forth are of no matter to them. It's not really surprising. They're hooked up to an umbilical that provides a steady supply of sustaining funds from the very interests they support and praise. Not a bad money-spinner really. You establish a "think-tank" that unflinchingly (and unthinkingly) sings the praises of the would-be plunderers and they pay you by the word.

So good ole Mike has come out in favour of non-compulsory voter registration and balloting. Just like in his former homeland. Of course, the idea is that the removal of compulsion would make life a lot harder for the Labor party; supposedly its lower-socioeconomic demographic would be less likely to register and turn out. The Labor party really only has itself to blame for this. Apart from the grossly cynical decision to call an early, self-serving election they tampered with the electoral system to give themselves an edge by pushing the specious "one vote, one value" principle. That was a dangerous precedent to set. They did it for no reason other than their own electoral advantage and now they will have to drag that baggage uphill if they fight the Tories on this one.

How is "one vote - one value" specious? It purports that there is an ubiquitous merit in having all representatives elected by the same numbers of electors, i.e. the same number of electors in each electoral district. Weighting votes by having some candidates elected by smaller numbers of constituents than others is supposed to be as heinous as gerrymandering. I heard Stephen Smith, our Foreign Minister and MHR for Perth, W.A., pushing this line on a TV panel show recently and was provoked by his simpleton surety on the matter. If Steve really believes it he's lost his marbles. The practice of weighting votes in the W.A. electoral system to allow smaller constituencies in the hinterland isn't unreasonable. It's petty compensation for the uphill battle that the bush fights against the eternal "flight to the cities" and the negative discrimination this brings. The indisputable fact is that the hinterland is where the main wealth of the State comes from. Cutting back the opportunities of those who choose to make a home there isn't really very clever. Can we really stuff Perth full of three or four million people and then run the entire non-metropolitan economy on a "fly-in, fly-out" system? I thought we had a water supply problem and a sewage treatment problem. And what about those famous housing costs everyone's been squawking about for the past twenty years? Did I imagine all that blarney about "decentralisation" and easing the pressure on urban resources?

Without representation out of proportion to the size of the population, those hinterland areas will suffer an acceleration of the process of withdrawal of services and consequent loss of population. There won't be a political incentive to resist the process. And why is this being done? Because the hinterland seats have consistently returned conservative members to the State Parliament. Simple as that. They kept the Labor party from controlling the Legislative Council for many years and returned Country/National Party members to the Assembly. Well, now the Labor party has had its win over them. But, oh...what happened on the 6th of September just passed? They lost the election! Yep, the new, "fair" system returned a conservative Coalition government and gave a new lease of life to the National party. And now the conservatives, with the likes of Nahan leading the charge will have their turn. With equal hypocrisy and self-serving falsity they will push the idea of voluntary registration and balloting. And they may have the numbers to get it through.

For the sake of attacking each other's support bases the main blocs are hacking away at what was an exemplary system. And here's something for the likes of Stephen Smith to think about: What if this "unbreachable principle" of "one vote, one value" was applied in the context of the Commonwealth electoral system? If disproportionate representation is such anathema, each province of the Commonwealth should have the number of House seats and Senators that its proportion of the nation's population would indicate. So, where would that put Stephen Smith's home state, Western Australia? Certainly not with 12 Senators. Perhaps 8. Would the ACT and NT still qualify for 2 Senators? And if the provision in the Constitution that all original States of the Federation are guaranteed at least 5 seats in the House was removed, Tasmania would be reduced from 5 to 2. As well as dropping from 12 senators to 3. South Australia would certainly lose at least 4 Senators. And the Big Three, New South Wales/Victoria/Queensland would collectively gain as many as were lost by the others.

Obviously, the Senators don't sit in provincial blocs, nor do they often vote across party lines to defend a provincial interest. This often leads to mockery of the Senate in response to its title "States' House" (although it should now be "States and Territories" , since they've received Senate representation). The omission in this viewpoint is that the existence of those Senate seats provides a motive for the parties to give consideration to provincial concerns from the less-populated provinces which would otherwise be neglected. They don't often clash within their party ranks in the Senate because all parties have a vested interest in going along with certain main trends in national policy. If some parts of the nation could be reduced in electoral importance the inhabitants thereof would begin to notice that the Senate we have now wasn't just a paper tiger for provincial interests. Unfortunately, some people will only cotton to that when they're actually being thoroughly treated like dirt by Canberra. And that's the risk being run by Western Australians like Stephen Smith when they throw away that protective principle in the State context. What will Steve say if the Premiers of the three largest States demand application of "one vote, one value" to the Commonwealth's Constitution? Not much of coherence or consequence I reckon.

Post#92 The New Mini E (lectric) - Emissions Free Car - from Digg

2008-10-19T15:49:00.003+08:00

"The BMW Group is about to become the first manufacturer of premium automobiles to deploy a fleet of nearly 500 all electric vehicles for private use in daily traffic. Powered by a 150 kW (204 hp) electric motor and fed by a high-performance rechargeable lithium-ion battery, the vehicle will be nearly silent and emissions free."

A story from Digg.

read more | digg story

Post#91 Hire a Hall / Everything (An enl-eye-tening discovery)

2008-10-18T10:29:00.003+08:00

I was checking out some of my blogmarked sites at Blogexplosion (click the referral banner at the top of this page to check them out) and I discovered a post on a blog called "Eye See - Eye Talk" dealing with retinal detachment in platform divers. I found this pretty shocking and disheartening. I'd never heard of this and had never suspected that this was one of the hazards in the sport. I thought knocking your head on a board or platform (bad enough to be enough, I think) was the only peril its practitioners faced.

Post #90 A Science Experiment

2008-10-16T14:21:00.007+08:00

I was in a store a few days ago and saw fire blankets for sale. They're non-flammable fabric squares which can be pulled from a package hanging on your wall and thrown over any fire involving the sort of fuels which don't respond well to application of water, e.g. cooking oil.

It triggered a memory from school days about the misguided efforts of a teacher to demonstrate the process known as "sublimation". This is the direct translation of a substance from a solid to a gaseous form. This could have been a difficult thing to demonstrate in the bare-boards science classroom that my high school featured; things that will turn from solid to gas at room temperature usually aren't lying around loose on shelves, for obvious reasons. However, an apparently fortuitous circumstance helped out the would-be demonstrator. In the classroom was a CO2 fire extinguisher. The enterprising teacher figured that he could show us the process by improvising with this device. He pulled the retainer pin from its trigger and blasted the extinguisher repeatedly against a blackboard. After several minutes of this a lump of solidified CO2 was sticking to the board. We were then exhorted to observe how it vaporised and disappeared into the air. For the benefit of those slow to catch on, or having trouble seeing from the back of the room, he put more of it in place with repeated furious blasts from the nozzle of the extinguisher. I didn't think this was all so amazing. Perhaps if a lump of solid metal had disappeared, it would have been worth the build-up, but this exercise just seemed to me to be showing the boring obvious and to be a waste of the contents of the extinguisher.

A week later when the great "sublimation" show was a fading memory, the same teacher was placing various items on the lab bench at the front of the room for an experiment when he spilled some kerosene on the bench top. He made a rapid grab at the flask he'd spilled it from and knocked over a Bunsen burner. The burner was operating and ignited the kerosene which was now spreading along the bench-top. The teacher thought he'd settle the burner down by pulling its supply hose from the gas tap at the end of the bench (The burner was lying in a spreading pool of burning kero by now). That stopped the burner fuelling the fire at its end of the hose but allowed gas to vent directly from the tap. The valve had a habit of sticking open and removing the hose plug hadn't popped the valve out to stop the gas flow. Of course the gas stream now ignited from the flames coming from the kero. It came out at full pressure, not the small flow the burner's outlet valve had been set to, and it was blazing a metre-long flame down the bench. One of my classmates was of Austrian ancestry and was a World War Two buff. He called out, delightedly, "Achtung! Flammenwaffe!!"

Now there's a dilemma: You've got burning kero spreading down the bench towards containers of volatile materials standing at its end (sulphur powder, acids, alcohol, other such goodies...). You've also got a gas flame a metre long that's doing God-knows-what to the gear on the bench top which is also surrounded by the burning kero. What do you do first, fight the kero fire or try to shut off the gas? I didn't know then and I still don't, but I guess there was a main tap near the bench or under it from which you could stop the gas. The teacher probably knew but he didn't seem to remember...anyway he decided that the kero was first priority. A reasonable decision; the gas flame was of finite length and coming from a fixed outlet, the kerosene was spreading fast along the four-metre long bench. He decided to give the kerosene the benefit of the trusty extinguisher's attention. In a smooth, commando-svelte motion he turned to the red cylinder of salvation resting in its wall bracket, hefted it, pulled the retaining pin (...close breech cover, draw back actuator lever...), pointed the uncompromising black metal nozzle at the kerosene fire and pulled the trigger lever. A blast of ice-cold fire-smothering CO2 jetted forth. For one second. Then, nowt but a feeble puff. Yes, he'd tested it to death. It was empty.

Now, you may be thinking, "What were the students doing while this..." Those of us at the front were taking a keen interest because the first students' bench was actually right up against the front of the lab bench. I was sitting at that bench with several others and was collecting my equipment and preparing to retreat from the kerosene which was burning only a few centimetres away. The others in the class were just watching, surprisingly, without laughing. There were about thirty of us in the room and no bastard, me included, was trying to help the guy. Anyway, there wasn't really a damn thing we could do. This is why the fire blankets in the shop triggered my memory of that day. They would have been just the thing to stop the progress of the fire. There weren't any in the lab. I don't believe there was one in the entire school.

Having discovered that his mate, the extinguisher, was extinct, the teacher cast about frantically for an alternative. Not having a suppressor blanket he applied his improvising talent again and seized upon a large cloth lying on a side table. Now that cloth had been hanging around the lab for years. It had done sterling service as a wiper-up of messes of all kinds and had collected within its fibres every chemical which had ever been used and spilled or dropped in that lab.

I once heard an American commentator on international affairs use a metaphor to describe errors in US foreign policy which was a story about a man walking through a perilous forest: "As he's walking along, in the gloomy light under the forest canopy, he sees a stick lying on the ground ahead him, a small curved branch that's fallen from a tree. In the poor light he mistakes the stick for a snake and panics. Casting about for something to hit the snake with, he sees something lying on the ground behind him which he wrongly believes is a stick...and he grabs it up..." That perfectly describes the situation of that fire-frightened teacher. That old cloth was probably the most flammable piece of textile product within the borders of the Commonwealth of Australia. And that's what he chose to beat the fire out with.

It caught in one millionth of a second and he was waving a blanket of fire as he spread the still-burning kerosene even further. I also remember that every speck of old spillage adhering to the bench-top was now igniting in this ideal fire environment. Little spurts of purple and yellow flame flickered into view for a fraction of a second as chemicals were liberated from the bench surface by the heat of the fire. Brilliant white sparkles showed where long-forgotten magnesium powder spills had occurred. At least it was getting a good clean-out.

As the cleaning-cloth was now beyond being held in a bare hand it was thrown to the floor and the teacher began futilely stamping on it. He had to give up and let it burn as the kero fire licked at the containers of combustibles standing at the end of the bench. He began grabbing them and transferring them to a waist-height shelf that was along the side of the room at right-angles to the lab bench. In this, at least, he succeeded.

Now he had a real inspiration. The lab bench had a metal sink. He decided to squeegee the burning kero into the sink using two large steel rulers that were on the blackboard shelf. He pushed the kero back, corralled between the rulers, and forced it over the rim of the sink. This required some suffering on his part because those rulers were excellent conductors of heat, but he'd beaten the fire at last. Most of the kero was in the sink, the little left on the bench was burning out. The burning cloth was now a smouldering, greasy black twist on the scorched wooden floor. That just left the flame-thrower gas tap. Picking up a piece of steel tube from under the bench, he advanced on the outlet, reached out and tapped it with the pipe. The valve popped out and shut off the gas.

There were some moments of silence as we all surveyed the now-quiescent scene. Then a burst of applause and sarcastic cheering. "All right, settle down, you blokes", said the teacher and proceeded to use some unburnt cloths to mop up the mess he'd made.

I always laugh at the memory of that episode but I knew from the moment it happened that it was nearly a catastrophe. I'm ever more amazed as the years pass at how ill-judged he was and how ill-equipped that place was. The thing that beats me most is how a man past thirty could be so foolish as to waste the contents of the fire extinguisher in the one room in the school where it was most likely to be needed. I have wondered if he had to tell the headmaster that he'd used up the CO2 in a dopey experiment. It's occurred to me that he may have said that he used it up in fighting the fire. Maybe he never said a word and just left the empty extinguisher for someone else to find out about the hard way. None of the students would have gone to talk about it with the headmaster. They were different days. There were lines you didn't cross. What happened at school stayed at school. What happened with a teacher might be discussed with other students but no-one would have crawled to the boss and informed about it. Today he'd be up to his neck in that burning kerosene.