Just how "Left" are you? - A test for the Poseur

Cuban President Fidel Castro (R) and Mari Alkatiri visited students from East Timor who are studying in Cuba as part of a Cuban government program for Latin American doctors. (Reuters/Omara Garcia Mederos)

He is, after all a democratically-elected Lefty. He is clearly in need of the Left's support. The local Yank puppies are rewriting history throughout the South Pacific, PNG, West Irian and Timore Leste to disguise the fact that the commies have not gone away. Socialists like Fidel are winning by lobbing medical expertise into crowds of Third World civilians - uninjuring thousands! Timor has oil, Havanah has Doctors, or haven't you noticed? So - which side are you on?

Socialism, if left to it's own devices, will overpower any religion, Islam to Catholicism. Violent socialism is the only force capable of stopping fundamental Islam in its tracks. It exposes the extreme right to powerful scrutiny in poor communities (Catholics throughout South America are sodding socialists, they are reminded of Jesus' teachings to the poor and they see a living God; long dead to the West.)
Emerging from years of capitalist exploitation®, South American countries are uniting and organising, they are not competing with each other, it's a powerfull synergy that appears to present an alternative to gangsterism, greed and intolerance.

Here's Tim Anderson's take from New Matilda

and Peter Boyle of Green Left Weekly

Will you be complicit in allowing US/Australian interests to overthrow Timor Leste democracy and hand power to the Portuguese elite? (Xanana Gusmao, Josã Ramos-Horta and that poor little rebel called Alfredo Alves Reinado - An Australian-trained elite officer who's wife works for the American ambassador - Hrrumph, some "rebel" commander! Sitiveni Rabuka would swallow his arse, whole.)

Labor won't dare bring this up as it's impossible to howl in Dogwhistledonia. It will eventually bring into question Labor's Lefty credentials, none too soon IMHippyO.

No mistakes here, Lefty-Lites, you're either with 'em, or you're with Howard/Downer. GOWAAN, git back in yer box before Bolt hears you bleating!

Viva Fidel xxxx. Viva Free Democracy in Timor Leste!


28/06/2006 11:12:50 PM - Update:
Straight out of the Che mission manual, Alkatiri has now been deposed by evil Lying Capitalist Running Dogs® - his followers in the East of Timor Leste now have their martyr, their valiant leader is now justified in revving up the 1975 civil war that followed Portugal's cut-n-run. Alkatiri, the clear winner of a "free and fair" election was removed by external armed forces (Australian) despite all the usual democratic remedies available to Timor Leste's democracy. There is no doubt that decisions were made with the Deputy's .45 in their back. Welcome to Open-source Warfare, there are workshops everywhere - "Enemy of my Enemies - 101".

I am NOT an Alkatiri supporter, I don't know enough about the man - I meekly point out how far to the right Australia has always been. The Real Left, for most of us, disappeared with the post-war affluence boom, the Really Left became the enemy of Australia's Left and the residual class distrust for capitalists became the foundation for today's unions and their political wingnuts.

These days the Real Left follow Che, not Marx, and the tactics are not post-modern. The point is, we are the enemy of the only sustainable force capable of keeping the theMob at bay. Capitalism cannot survive long without the socialist fat controller and praying to The Gods won't put food in the pot, so my guess is violent socialist revolution is sneaking right up under our well-elevated gnoses. We are so not Left. Alkatiri is.

I musta been a sheep when they passed this . . .

from BoingBoing

Australia puts out for Hollywood with new copyright law

Australia is finally reforming its backwards copyright law, which made it illegal to record shows off the TV and radio, and to rip CDs for personal playback. However, in the process, they proposed a new law that is even more backwards -- one that prohibits watching your recorded shows more than once, one that doesn't allow you to make backups of your CDs, and that doesn't let you loan them to friends.

Australia's digital TV standards come from the DVB, a standards-setting body that is in the midst of creating one of the worst, most restrictive crippleware DRMs ever conceived of. With this new law in place, the "super-broadcast-flag" envisioned by DVB will be a slam dunk in Australia.

It's funny: the Hollywood cartel couldn't get the US to adopt the Broadcast Flag, so they went and sold this bill of dubious goods to Australians. You'd think Australia would be smarter than that: it's pretty sad to be the easy-lay nation that Hollywood turns to when it can't convince America to put out.

Are there any wingnuts out there can't see that this bit of Yankey Doodle Gob-jobby is gonna get Costello into heaps of pain when his yooth demographic runs outa music! As Beazley's world still runs on vinyl, mayhaps someone will tell him that this will deliver votes from a mob that normally don't interrupt their grazing for anything . . .

Beazely! - Sheep Have Ipods!

They shoot Boomers, don't they?

One of my Grandfathers rode out of Colac to collected three Gallipoli Stars. His father drove the Cobb & Co Mail coach right up till a new fangled motor-lorry forgot to drive itself home when the 90-year-old bushie fell asleep at the "reigns". The other Gramps was the son of an immigrant Welsh Chemist who settled in Narrabri. An educated 16-year old in 1914, Pop took one look at situation in Europe and promptly became a cabinet maker at the Enfield Rail Yards in Sydney - an activist, atheist and socialist preacher, a Cabinet Maker to the Cockies.

These two didn't know each other, and never had that great debate that formed and polarized both branches of my family. I listened to both sides, agreeing with each in turn, but never together. The twin mirrors merged into an extended dialogue that a hapless and naive adolescent stitched into a world view that is, at once, immensely tolerant of others and totally at odds with the shallowness of human perception.

Now I bin grey'd and confused for so long - it ain't news . . . somewhere, out in the dreaming, there's a mob of post- boomer generations who mumble, unhelpfully, about grey nomads, Jews, wogs, etc. (If you thank us for the toys, kiddies, you can blame us for all the crap.) It was our parents who had the bejesus scared out of them by WW II, it was me (a boomer) who took advantage of the folks who swore "never again", again. In that great public push after the war - in a profound desire to ensure the world didn't repeat the mistakes - the UN flag was raised as an alternative to the misery.

(The UN is dead now. It gave up its soul when it couldn't stop the Coalition of the Willing from eating Iraqi kids, live to air, for material gain. The UN died defending its powerful patrons, the UN allowed itself to take sides and this just isn't survivable for a global umpire.)

The generation I exploited in the 60s was the same generation that fought over and destroyed a fair part of the civilized world in WW II. After getting the blame for 60 million deaths there was no way they were gonna profit from it unmolested. (I was only nineteen.) They had clearly, demonstrably failed their civilian populations and they got booted up the arse by their own kids - us hippy boomers. Then, reality sets in . . . they'd let us win.

Mum and Dad somehow didn't trust what their folks had taught them, after two world wars, the "blind obedience to authority" trampoline was pushed aside because it was dangerous to kids. The boomers are those protected kids, the 60s student hippies were outraged by authority when conscription meant the jungle nightmare. The revolution was as inevitable then as it is now. The boomers are a lousy demographic to pick on if you rely only on big brother sound bites.

The boomers, in my mirrors, became evenly divided - those who cherished their children directly, no matter what came along, and those who never really met their kids - they were busy making the bucks and giving their kids every advantage possible, way into the future. Both were compelling arguments until theMarket chose sides. Suddenly half the population had money and theMarket covering its bum, those who chose their kids over consumerism were, and are, vilified as "hippies, layabouts, welfare cheats, etc". Hippies are anti consumerist and hostile to economic fundamentalists. As a consequence, half the population thinks it's their sacred duty to imagine hippies and all the socialist/social democrat pinkos as the enemy.

In theMarket's ken, you are simply
a.) Profiting from it
b.) Working for it
c.) Contributing to it
or
c.) Hell spawn, witch, hippy, commie, etc.
The entire industrial revolution is based on this work ethic.

Most Boomers remember that for every drug-encrusted radical out there there was a straight dealer working the crowd. We grew out of the drugs and got on with it, but the profiteers followed along like hags until they finally regained the power and completed the revolution, The wheel is coming around again - theMarket is at "top-dead-centre". Shit! Do you need a degree in Tantric Activism to know it's time to start banging on the bars. Some things need to be repeated, ad nauseum, in this case it's both the message and the music - "Freedom is a constant, eternal struggle". Were genXers watching T.V.? Why did they stay so quiet for so long? Feel free to abuse me, please, it would be a sign of life, at least - I'm nowhere near as scary as the bloke paying your wages.

So where did things go wrong? "All the way with LBJ" had been soundly routed, so the second wave of teenagers chilled out and switched on a MacTelevision. By the end of the seventies the 12-14 year old GenXers were firmly understood by theMarket and bracketed with the "greed is good", "buy now, pay later" and "Ronny McD is your best friend" advertising and, fuck me, it's "life's too hard" and home to mum and dad to bitch about the boomers - this is not my story, it's yours. As I keep telling my four 20-somethinks.

The only truth I heard from Keating was when he called Australia the "arsehole of the world" and the "banana republic" jibe. He didn't mention that there is no difference between a banana republic, an oil republic or a democratic republic - If you're a one-trick pony and that trick isn't sustainable then the market can and will dictate your social outcomes. Australia has many crocodiles and just a few trick holes in its geography - these holes are protected as places of worship, a source of eternal wealth for the theMarket believers, in 20 years they will be old bones, a smile on the dial of the crocodile.

If boomers are to be dealt with as a group, then they are no different than any other group of humans, across time from America to Rome. Greed is life's minimum requirement, whether animal or insect, the ability to curb greed is the mark of true civilization (at least in my treehouse), hence my disdain for capitalism - it legitimizes and rewards larceny.

Australia is just another street walker, pimped hard by the market till she's so old and ugly her own kids will be ashamed of her. If you're serious about the future, take yer dick out of your wallet and give the old girl a break.

Pot Verses the DopesWhoDon't

This extract is from the Economist - A frightful little Nun put me on to it.
(theHippy long ago escaped the drudgery of "scalpel and Wax" but cutting and pasting in moderation is cool while the chuffer is warming):

IF CANNABIS were unknown, and bioprospectors were suddenly to find it in some remote mountain crevice, its discovery would no doubt be hailed as a medical breakthrough. Scientists would praise its potential for treating everything from pain to cancer, and marvel at its rich pharmacopoeia-many of whose chemicals mimic vital molecules in the human body. In reality, cannabis has been with humanity for thousands of years and is considered by many governments (notably America's) to be a dangerous drug without utility. Any suggestion that the plant might be medically useful is politically controversial, whatever the science says. It is in this context that, on April 20th, America's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a statement saying that smoked marijuana has no accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.

The statement is curious in a number of ways. For one thing, it overlooks a report made in 1999 by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), part of the National Academy of Sciences, which came to a different conclusion. John Benson, a professor of medicine at the University of Nebraska who co-chaired the committee that drew up the report, found some sound scientific information that supports the medical use of marijuana for certain patients for short periods-even for smoked marijuana.

This is important, because one of the objections to marijuana is that, when burned, its smoke contains many of the harmful things found in tobacco smoke, such as carcinogenic tar, cyanide and carbon monoxide. Yet the IOM report supports what some patients suffering from multiple sclerosis, AIDS and cancer-and their doctors-have known for a long time. This is that the drug gives them medicinal benefits over and above the medications they are already receiving, and despite the fact that the smoke has risks. That is probably why several studies show that many doctors recommend smoking cannabis to their patients, even though they are unable to prescribe it. Patients then turn to the black market for their supply.

In America, this [research] is impossible. But it is happening in other countries. In 1997, for example, the British government asked Geoffrey Guy, the executive chairman and founder of GW Pharmaceuticals, to come up with a programme to develop cannabis into a pharmaceutical product.

At the start of this year, the company made the first step towards gaining regulatory approval for Sativex in America when the FDA accepted it as a legitimate candidate for clinical trials. But there is still a long way to go.

And that delay raises an important point. Once available, a well-formulated and scientifically tested drug should knock a herbal medicine into a cocked hat. No one would argue for chewing willow bark when aspirin is available. But, in the meantime, there is unmet medical need that, as the IOM report pointed out, could easily and cheaply be met-if the American government cared more about suffering and less about posturing.

Do you think that Sativa and her children are a bigger threat to health than a big mac in a Parramatta Road café? Sorry, rhetorical. I'm fresh outa figs.

Our drugs enforcement industry (including the regional cages you see round many country towns) chews up somewhere in the order of eleventy billion dollars per year to maintain. (I made that number up.) I do wonder about the numnuts who are prepared to pay so much for a "small government, low taxation, devil-take-the-loser" kind of society. Just so long as the disabled get reamed they're prepared to abandon their Tory/Conservative principles and let the Government balloon into this caricature that chases kids around playgrounds with beagles. (Sorry Snoop, Woodstock has no sense of humor.)

Drugs are currency, they're not illegal because Joe Blow might harm hisself and his neighbors, or because society may fall apart - they're illegal because that's what gives them value! Col. Oliver North was Hopalong Regan's personal guns-for-drugs dealer. To legalize drugs would would do to the White House what banning the Yen would do to the NYSX.

Ice and meth would disappear overnight if you stopped the profitable manufacture of the precursor to it all - pseudo-ephedrine. (Ephedrine itself was banned decades ago.) That wouldn't help that 2 or 3% of the population biologically destined to chemical addictions, though. They'll always find something new.

Chemical addictions we can see and ameliorate without resorting to violence - it's the insidious, invisible addictions loose in every human's psyche that are driving our culture raving mad. Prohibition is one symptom of that, religion is another. Zero tolerance is a religio-facist Utopian ideal, demonstrably unrelated to the human condition. All of this is maintained by fools, incapable of thinking critically for themselves, screeching self-righteous dogma.

Do you think Afghanistan could have been taken without the Northern Alliance - the drug warlords? Shouldn't the DEA arrest those mothers, rather than some babe with an ekky in her purse? Oh, right, that's different somehow. Let the Twerp who is without sin decide . . .

SS-N-22 Sunburn - Cruising in the ramjet

Springing the Trap

"At the battle of Cannae in 216 BC the great Carthaginian general, Hannibal, tempted a much larger Roman army into a fateful advance, and then enveloped and annihilated it with a smaller force. Out of a Roman army of 70,000 men, no more than a few thousand escaped. It was said that after many hours of dispatching the Romans Hannibal’s soldiers grew so tired that the fight went out of them. In their weariness they granted the last broken and bedraggled Romans their lives…

Let us pray that the US sailors who are unlucky enough to be on duty in the Persian Gulf when the shooting starts can escape the fate of the Roman army at Cannae. The odds will be heavily against them, however, because they will face the same type of danger, tantamount to envelopment. The US ships in the Gulf will already have come within range of the Sunburn missiles and the even more-advanced SS-NX-26 Yakhonts missiles, also Russian-made (speed: Mach 2.9; range: 180 miles) deployed by the Iranians along the Gulf’s northern shore. Every US ship will be exposed and vulnerable. When the Iranians spring the trap, the entire lake will become a killing field." - Mark Gaffney

The Might of the U.S fleet on a leash, neutered, even the Argies have some. An impenetrable array of conventional warheads that ONLY long-range ICBM nukes can destroy - finally calling the bluff on the M.A.D. doctrine. I want one!

["It appears that he’s just an irresponsible contrarian as a matter of temperament." - Bruce]

Conspiracy theories from the tree-house #1:

A few years from now . . .

• We start a nuclear Waste Complex in South Australia.
• We allow Imported waste for a big, fat fee.
• South Australia starts a second, bigger, safer repository and begins importing Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
• P.M. Beazley smells a tax and designs a "fixture".
• South Australian Govt reject Labor's intervention and secedes from the Commonwealth.
• P.M. Beazely orders Peter Garret strap on a cardboard cutout of Alex Downer and spread fixture in a tuneful way.
• South Australia immediately invites US intervention - becomes 52nd State of the USA.
• SA, USA declares 200-mile security zone and fences-in WA and NT as Protectorate Territories (Renamed West Texas).
• Queensland calls itself South Florida and introduces "cock-sucking" to secondary qualifications.
• Beazley sells South Florida to Singapore Airlines for $29.00 (and an alligator purse).
• Spanish becomes the second language of NSW and Victoria.
• NSW and Victoria align themselves with the US and become known as "Little Nevada" due to the fallout, the gambling and the amazing number of retards living there.
• Tasmania is sold to an unnamed penal/correctional corporate operating out of Cuba.
• Hippies become cereal pests, drug-tolerant and feral, they infest the badlands, happily enjoying their peace, love and mungnuts - the bastards, they are laughing at us!

Bloody Labor Thunderbox

Leave it to Beazer - Labor's Nuclear Blimp!

I am utterly and profoundly appalled (!) by the Australian "Intellectual Class" trotting out bucketsful of the most myopic, childish pigswill - you reckon Hippies are out of touch? Have no clue at all about the hard realities? Are so obsessed by dreamy utopias that mere pragmatism escapes our pot-furrowed brows? Well have a look around you!

Labor-endorsing Genii are now seriously trying to sell a nuclear solution . . . (wait for it) . . . to solve the greenhouse nightmare! The parents of these intellectual giants were, 100 years earlier, insisting on a coal-powered future as a safe solution to the industrial energy crisis.

My grasp of mathematics fits happily on a Tally-Ho, so feel free:
Of all the energy consumed by humans, electricity provides only a small fraction. Less than 17% of that electricity already comes via fission. For nuclear-generated electricity to replace our dependence on fossil fuel as a source of energy the sheer number of nuclear power stations and its attendant cabling is nothing compared to the logistics that Governments and theMarket would face when trying to safely move the fissionables around. Too little, too late? Swallowed a spider to capture the fly?

Yep, my math is lousy, but I can see only greenhouse forever, you won't cure asthma with lung cancer, you're wasting your time.

Not satisfied with mutual masturbation, these folks further suggest that Australia should "get involved" in the nuclear process and take responsibility for the waste, ensuring all spent fuel rods are returned to our mining industry for safe keeping (minus the 600 tonnes so far oxidized as Depleted Uranium projectiles in Yugoslavia, Falklands, Afghanistan Iraq, etc.)

Pragmatism will require millions of fuel rods (proudly painted in green and gold) being transported around the planet to and from our proverbial "arsehole of democracy and common sense". Is your blind faith in the market so rusted on that you can't see the immediate and palpable danger of transporting this stuff in a world full of terrorists? Will the market never be tempted to create a single-desk uranium exporter? (You would have to, anyway, for quasi-security reasons) You could call it the Australian Uranium Board (AUB) and you know where I'm going with this.

This is right up there with Royal Prinny Di's brainfully inspired suggestion that manufacturers of land mines take responsibility for their products immediately the war is over. The cost of digging them up is covered in the purchase price. Yep, that worked.

Bangladeshi recyclers would benefit from the decommissioned "hot" ships (or do we sink them in the Nullabore, too).

"the market" will ensure the security of our gene pool forever, amen! (At least while there's a buck in it.)

Clever people should be indulged, yeah, but Lefty intellectuals need to have their noses firmly rubbed in pigshit because all this competitive cleverness is simply greasing Darwin's guillotine. theHippies were right forty years ago - and still (demonstrably) are.

We need a virus that will sterilize 90% of all human males, worldwide, for at least three generations. Every sperm will be sacred. (Sorry, I was just trying to be clever.)

Meanwhile, back at the press club nosh:

Peter Shergold, a very confident public servant, in fact the PM's personal public servant, revealed the method to Howard's inscrutable madness. In a smart-ass display, the very model of the postmodern major general layed it out in the usual smug fashion. Bear with me, ma.

he explained how the public service are past the Sir Humpers' secure tenure, lifetime membership model and well into the realm of competitive, promotion-based-on-merrit rickshaw. [longhand for "They are now entirely dependant on the Minister's good will".] He explained at length that pollies have to face the electorate evey three years. He intimated that it was unconsionable for ministers' tenure to be terminated because of the errors of mere public servants. He went on to mention the AWB cockup and then, as the room hushed and the lights lowered, pulled the camera in close and sprayed his mia culpa all over us.

Conclusions:
For top public servants, to guarantee tenure, stopping a bullet for their minister is written into their workplace agreements. Postmodern Democracy is shit. The postmodern revolution will be exponentially bitchier.

The church on common ground with Hemp dealers? (E&OE)

How does the logic go? The hippies want pot legalised and the dealers want ever-harsher penalties . . . When it comes down to supply-side economics, who's side is Jesus on?

Full cred to the religus right who seem to have invented a weed 6 million times more deadly than hippy shit. Bless 'em but hemp genetics seems a strange pastime for them, wot? Or maybe not?

According to most preachers the dealers are preferable to hairy atheists. They're wealthy. Eager to fund the mentalist churchs that are offering, say

• tax free contributions
• close connections to government
• a sociable, safe place to meet
• plausible deniability
• large numbers of honest but deluded Jesus freaks for cammo, character refs and alibis

The little church on the hill
There's a lot of dark matter here (on a planetary scale, let's call it money). I mean, god is a strange attractor in his own right, but at one church he's accreting way more gas and dust than you'd expect for his apparent density. Way more dark matter than the numbers allow for.

[No, babe, a zodiac is a boat! The nth Law of Thermodynamics - money has gravity but no mass - undetectable, except by direct inferrence.]
(Thank you Mrs Reader's Digest. pzorff.)

Looking further . . . err, nope, it's clouding up out there.

Harradeen did it beautifully. By the book, love it or lump it.
The new boy, however . . .
Suppose you knew a spruiker who was both a pivotal voting Senator and a preacher with a degree in Business Fundamentalism. (Who started his own Church. From scratch.) Did I mention you'd get a tax break on any contributions. It's the perfect refuge for overcashed crims - whatever the grift. If it only had a few card tables . . .

I know you retards think all hippies are dealers so you've forced yourself to agree with me when I say "this is heaven sent" - A "Must Join" for all pot-selling child molesters. Pain in the proverbial for the rest of you, who may or may not lose your kids to hemp laws. God bless Jesus' new buddies. If He'd meant people to smoke weed, he would'na made it so expensive to grow, nor petrol so much fun to snark. Dark, dumb matter.

Meanwhile, back in the real world I worry far more about kids binge-drinking as a right of passage. Onya Oz, ya bloody twerps - the hemp penalties guarantee a shootout will eventually drive-by a street like yours. Welcome to America's zero tollerant drug war (the one the DEA fucked up).

In the same way that massive industrial polution is neatly explained by nasty Tobacco products, mental health will get hundreds of millions spent on its behalf eradicating the dreaded divil weed, which John Howard (a true hippy-hater) told parliament the other day "causes 60% of the mental health problems in our youth". (And I always thaught it was punishment from god for being wicked.) Stay tuned for the Ad campaign as "Reefer Madness" does the rounds again. Expect to pay an extra 150-200 per, suckers. I can finally move the plumbing indoors and get rid of the still. I might even have enough left over to show the church some appreciation. Naw, I'm just a hippy - dealers have to get up too early.

Finally, despite the fact that it isn't as usefull, I want pot given the same treatment as RU486. It's a Fucking Scientific/Medical question and its efficacy or otherwise determined by the facts, not the minister's moral debts to Jesus (See above). Well, is pot more dangerous than RU486? - 20 years in Long Bay worth of worse? Don't hurt yerself thinking about it. And. Thanks for all the fish!

Commix. Religun. Riots, Occam

Aw, crap. I gotta weigh into this one.
Now pay attention!

Whether I'm a pacifist hippy or a full-on religus fundy nutwalla, if you spit in my eye, I'll drop you. It's not about gods, freedoms or politics, it is about insulting a stranger on a bus and feeling too silly about it to back down. Pow! right in the kisser.

That's all.
But while I'm here . . .

The surrounding debate has been addled by guilt and counterspin, so I'll repeat my old mantra - The Left is for and about workering 'poor', it should never be a refuge for intellectual frippery. As most self-proclaimed Leftys these days indulge in little else, I'd suggest some rebadging is in order!

Coogee? Paris? Now it's Toon Town. How far do you think you can push folks around before they come after you? Our current politicians are diseased, their symptoms masked by media megalomaniacs.

Fer cack's sake, break the information monopoly enjoyed by the MSM. Freedom of information implies freedom of speech, why are you all insisting on just the freedom of speech when that implies the freedom to obfuscate? Bloggers have, for the first time, the ability to multiplex data. With genuine F.O.I. legislation and and entertaining blogs, media barons are left with a few bad cartoons.

The Collective Intelligence known to you as the Blogosphere already provides a Hubblesque resolution, the fight is on for the raw data - the secrets our pollies are hiding. Transparency is the grail. Put the bastards in a fishbowl and we can start seriously constructing an Information Age, and money-up a few dozen Tabloid Blog Sites. Imagine the peer pressure to get it right (works for science). Imagine the competition to make it interesting?

Heerffp!

[furball?]

(nope) . . .

Who does Labor represent now?

This is out of context and way off topic from a post at LaborFirst. Rather than make a pest of myself (I’m a slow learner), I thought it better to cure my indigestion back here. It’s a great piece about rising fuel, inner/outer urban divide (?) and about how Labor can get some electoral traction from the upheaval. One small par derailed the Blue Rhino:

"It's hard to appeal to an underclass anymore when there isn't one save for those who get themselves into such a position by their own deliberate actions eg. gambling addicts,drug addicts,alcohol addicts etc."

Gobsmacked! Is this really what today’s labor voters really think? It was commented in a casual way, you know? You know?

Dubbo, NSW, - how could new police powers invented for Sydney beaches so suddenly find a market out there? Labor planning? I was thoroughly enjoying the lentils right up till this cobbler. All those little guys in all those little country towns with no petrol to work with, tsk, those stupid peasants, what a laugh, eh? While we’re on the topic, what about those useless blackfellas, shoulda chose white parents, the hopeless indigents!

I'm truly pissed that the thinking is about maximising advantage rather than getting the nod for a job well done. It's a house of cards and it's getting Kim’s breezy arse all over it. Zero vision.

Rex, if you consider the conditions that grow folks who deliberately destroy their own lives, you may also see a huge block of votes going to feral Evangelicals who, like socialists before them, actually thrive on poverty and ignorance. Transport costs in outer metro and rural backwaters will create a growing market in underclass votes. Ignoring that is to affirm, and dutifully emulate, Howard's Plan. It is, above all, lousy strategy.

I don’t know if you’re aware of the grip the babbler churches have on rural NSW, if you want to understand just how to capture an electorate you need to study the relentless faith they’ve shown in the losers. At first they trained their own workforce from the displaced rural labourers that the “green Revolution” left stranded. They turned them into plumbers and electricians and gave them jobs building houses which they were given to live in whilst they built more houses for export bucks, all the time recruiting and supporting whole families.

They’ve been nearly invisible as a political force until now, but they’ve been making friends for 40 years. Labor, on the other hand, has done bugger all for this mob since Whitlam. While it continues to throw this baby out, it will continue to be just so much bathwater circling the drain.

Urbanization began when moving workers was cheaper than moving factories. When road freight begins shifting to private rail infrastructure then the likelihood of a drift back to the regionals becomes possible. With metropolitan land prices, water shortages, crime and pollution, the serfs might get the idea that small communities that look after themselves may have more to offer. Zero-tolerant rednecks are the norm in this environment, they don't vote Labor. The Church owns their houses and dictates their public morality. (To beat up on Groucho: I wouldn't vote for any politician who could win in this electorate!)

Politically, I suspect Barnaby clones will begin popping up in all sorts of electorates and the Episcopalian/whatever Jesus freaks will continue to developed institutional power in many of our pov regionals - it’s gonna take some planning and a lot of leadership to get any advantage from a mob you think of as untouchable. If Labor doesn't save the underclass, the Adventists will - with new IR laws and higher transport costs the numbers will soon be legion. Could Dubbo’s future be Melbourne’s in microcosm? There is no effective substitute for petrochems in the Australian Economy. None. Can you build enough razorwire paddocks for all the petrol addicts? Put ‘em to work chipping cotton when Auscot runs low on diesel?

"Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit." - Abbie Hoffman