tOhGone

In '72 (I was only 19), I wuz busy. With theJungle, ASIO, Feds and hippy babes all keeping me entertained, a career as a Guitarista in a pub band just wasn't paying the rent. So, I rented my arse to the hot metal trade and almost became a litho comp by default. (I planned to be a writer, someday, thankfully the 'purple' in me showed early and I stuck to technology.

Electronic Type Setting (ETS) came to Kent St., Sydely in '71 and like Mothra to a flame war did I went. (My grandpa had taught me about electronics and ham radio rigs, so this stuff was way more interesting than reading 20 Kg galleys upside-down). ETS - the fucking union wouldn't have a bar of it! The PKIU ranted about how computers were used by sheilas in accountancy offices and should be kept out of serious metal muting. So, naturally, I applied under the classification of "Photo comp", they claimed "no such classification", I countered with "Make one or I'm off to the Sheila's and Miscellaneous Anachronist's Affiliated".

The Red-skulled pommy twerp at the PKIU mumbled something as I swept off but it was years before I discovered what; and that's another funny union story.

I discovered the porn industry which, then as now, led the market in technical innovation and the creative application thereof. Porn was my finishing school in all things related to publishing: typesetting, layout, process camera/darkroom, colour seps, plates, kord and webb goodness. No need to be modest, I was still master of nothing in the Mainstream Labour/Capital Dickwaddyness, yet in 1974, if you read or saw any tabloid porn, it passed through my darkroom at Bertram-Horne. (The home of Ribald, Gay, Screw, etc., and registered Australian owner of the trade mark "Festival of Light" - fuck you Fred and Mary . . .

I also hacked my first VLSI via paper tape and a Singer teletype keyboard. Thanks Alice, still coding after all these years. (It's how a pacifist hippy wages war, these days.) If you want to mainline the future, think like a pornographer, get close up and dirty, play to mainstream stupidities.

The Crux of the Biscuit
Basically, I don't get on with humans. I wasn't properly socialized as a kid, they tell me, so I've been free to do my own thing - I honestly try to communicate effectively, but the bullshit required to talk to people who cart their ego about on their sleeves is just plain too weird. From theTreehouse, with the creek flooding like never before, not having to negotiate a conversation with anything smarter than another hippy is exactly where I belong. Thanks Rex, and the lovely Brownie, there's a jar of nugs and an old Strat on my back veranda - and I won't forget you.

I'm going home.

Cumbaya, Brothers and Sisters
and Peace.

Chicken and Egg, propaganda and education.

There are those who feel the need to rule and those who are happy to follow. Half are shepherds, the rest, sheep. The sheep are enlisted by shepherds (by force and deception, by fear and religion, by democracy and race) in order to satisfy their megalomania.

The Left and Right have different views on how to con the masses, but they both have the same goal: Power - the need to be obeyed. There is no effective difference between Hitler and Stalin, so why do Lefties and RWDBs purport to have a preference?

If you believe that thieves should be punished, then how can you defend capitalism? If you believe that murder is wrong, why are you ignoring helicopter gunships and cluster bombs in crowded civilian streets?

Altruism is no longer considered political capital, so there is no longer any point in Left/Right, Good/Evil, Superior/Inferior, Love/Hate terminology. You get the picture - it's really just "us" and "them", the tribes we are born into, the propaganda we've learned.

As a hippy I instinctively distrust all authority, by some definitions I'm an anarchist. I'm not overly misanthropic because I believe that Chas Darwin was on to something: All nature is a bastard and we, as animals, are merely a top predator and not currently extinct.

Rest in Riddance

Condolences to all atheists out there who will be more than a little disappointed that Jezza Falwell is NOT burning in Beelzebub's bud toaster. . .

Mr Fish can be found [HERE]

Gaia: The balance between Imagination and Knowledge

We are the product of 3 billion years of mollycoddling by a Heisenberg phenomena. Gaia is pure Chaos math. For me Gaia isn't a belief system, Its a theory, part of the Darwinist world and entirely as strange as the world the Pope lives in.

The system can't be beat. It's been 3 billion years growing and It has survived by maintaining water, somewhere on the planet, in a liquid state, for all of that time. (Liquid H2O is a prerequisite for carbon-based life). Its probability index is infinitesimally small. It shouldn't exist, but gods do play dice and we do exist. If you're not too busy chasing about for "happiness", stop and look up at the night sky - You know what those little sparks are, and why the clouds are covering them, you are a unique life form in having that ability. Possibly unique through all of Known Space.

The number of Earth-sized planets orbiting at circa 1 AU around boring old G2s would have to be myriad.
How many of these have Moon-sized moons? Still an unknowable plenty. So, cutting to the chase, look at the likelihood of any system maintaining liquid H2O through endless geologic epochs - vanishing few. Asimov, in his non-fiction essay "The Tragedy of the Moon" makes the point that our unusually large satellite, unlike Venus, has stripped away most of our atmosphere. It's this phenomena that allows water (solid, liquid and vapor) to moderate the resultant climate. This balance is the main component of what I think of as the Gaian mechanism. It's as much about the physics of the Earth-Moon tidal dynamics as it is about the water in which organic components chaotically thrive.

From the beginning, as soon as the environment was right, common organic molecules chaosed themselves into dividing. They developed into the protective shroud of green slime around the tidal fringes, releasing oxygen to rust the iron in the ocean water. Pilburra Iron. By exhaling O2, simple biota terraformed the planet and drastically altered the chemistry of the oceans. Now, any attempt by organic structures to interfere with the process will result in an imbalance likely to cause top-down (FILO) biocide. So, as the biota alter the conditions, all organics, both malign and beneficent, begin retreating until a Gaian balance is reestablished. The organics in the system effect the way water controls the global climate, this will feed back into the choices organisms are offered for sustainability in a Gaian (closed) system. Gaia is a fractal equation, part of chaos. Observable but not predictable, your place on the set is continually reiterated. This is a warning for god lovers - we are not Gaia's chosen species.

This was Darwin's cryptic message.

we are no longer part of the machine - like an earlobe overlocked with stainless steel trinkets, we're beginning to function outside of the regulated zone. The biota must be compatible with, or isolated from, the mainstream, lest the mainstream reconfigures and some functional gene pools are lost. Darwin, more or less, but Gaia's rules maintain the dynamic, you are only tolerated if you don't upset the harmony. All the cunning biocides are wrapped in fragile tissue, it doesn't take long before you stomp your way through the right combination, then Zippo! Your carbon is liberated. The dynamic moves on. No Heaven here.

If you look up now and then, Gaia's mechanics are easy to demonstrate. Its bones are shown every night on the television, every time Global Warming is yapped about, or when some bunghole drags out a "Computer Model". These models try to emulate the global climate under various conditions (usually greenhouse and CO2). We use powerful server farms and way complex 5GL compilers to emulate Gaia - a synergy that's been hardwired by supernovas. To emulate anything, you first have to study it. This codifying of the bones is beginning to expose the beast and, as fractal sets go, it's complexity belies it's fundamental simplicity. Nevertheless, it inexorably exposes and eliminates all unstable elements - It cleans up where Darwinian Evolution is confounded. If you have the intelligence to understand this, you are already extra-Darwin and Gaia is probably on your case . . .

Our science is thorough, accurate and wholly (1GL) serial-top-down topography. With a hippy's intuitive generalist overview, however, it's tempting to think that Gaia is not a freak of nature, rather, it is the freak called nature. Gaia is an improbable congruence of physical imperatives, and life as we know it has survived under Its mantle long enough to invent qwerty keyboards and write this observation down.

Jimmie Lovelock's announcement that Gaia is doomed was a tad premature. Gaia's physical structure is quite capable of recreating Its biological automata from scratch.

We should act Now, before It cranks it's awesome array of trial-and-error antibiotics and pops out an effective anti-human vaccine.

We must act Now, because we're hard to kill and we're prepared to sacrifice the entire ecosystem attempting to live forever.

Now, because the carbon in the biosphere (and us) is merely recycled supernova dust and it may not pile up like this again. Ever.

Quote of the day:

"Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. "In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force of the people. "The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. "

James Madison, April 20, 1795

So, who sez our pollies haven't learned from history?

Don't Panic - America will save us!

In the tradition of Weez, who can write more than one line without losing the plot.

The Internet will replace Rock and Roll in the next Social Revolution

Since the fifties and sixties, music and lyrics have interfaced the powerful youth movements of the "underground" and "alternate" cultures with the mainstream world view. I'm reminded of that when the Oils or Arlo Guthrie are playing. Until the Interwires came of age, there was no better way to communicate across cultures.

I truly believe that Bush, Blair and puppy John where all brought unstuck because the mainstream media failed to keep the Facts off the front pages. Without the WWW, David Hicks would eventually die, an old man in Leavenworth. We would not know his name, nor the names of a million Iraqis murdered for their oil.

Guard Internet Freedom with your lives, be a seditionist now and then. Yu gotta work for Peace, love and freedom.

relearning polity - uncured

This week I'm a non-aligned Gaian anti-theist kinda hippy. So, naturally, I spot Fundamentalism like cat shit in a sugar bowl when it’s applied to otherwise rigorous disciplines like capitalism, religion and democracy (or any other construction used to negotiate peacefully with your neighbours). This is especially important when it come to Saint Friedman and his chorus of retards in the Church of Capital, but it applies universally . . .

Utopian hippies are, at worst, a benevolent mob, not essential to society but, let me tell yu, a very comfortable place to be buried in. Anyone looking to some god for a Utopian afterlife may be tempted to martyr themselves and millions of others; Presnit Shrub, Christian and Capitalist, has murdered more civilians than all the jihad suicides combined. (theHippy's thing is to go with the worms, peacefully.)

More dangerous still, the Fundamental notion that the free market can solve most of our problems.

To believe that lot is to believe the "Intelligent Designer" was an economist. Jesus fucking Christ, who the fuck is rewriting the fucking bible this time? "'In God We Trust' On every penny you lend", say'th the Lord. And the Lord wiped his flaming arse on Shrub the Elder and Ol' Mose chalked up another ripping commandment.

The capitalist's application of economic terrorism has been sharpened in the US and is touted as the tactic that finished Russian communism. Meanwhile, Castro countered with "doctors for oil" (and kick started the Socialist debate in South America, again. More fundy hijinks to follow). The Albright/Clinton 1¢ jihad killed more kids in Iraq than all the Bushes - from Nazi Banker Bush on down to Gee Wiz Jr.

Now, our fundamentalist approach to capital is being redefined in the Chinese mainstream. The recent tsunami in the stock market was a Chinese torpedo, an evaluation run, a sabre rattling the Yankee buck. "Sell $US/buy euro", it was heard to mutter as it ploughed into the heart of democracy's arse . . .

Now, if you'll excuse for a moment, I've left a fine old Royal Navy rum alone in my basement with Mr. Grumpy.

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