It’s been quite a week in Australian politics, eh?
It’s a delicious spectacle for those of us who’ve suffered through eight years of the John Howard kakistocracy. Suddenly, Howard is facing the twin realisations that his Iraq escapade is going to come back to torment him and that Mark Latham is likely to make mincemeat of him at this year’s election.
The air is thick with shadenfreude, and for once it’s oriented in the right direction. Continue reading
A women’s choir has been banned from performing two songs about the Iraq war and any other songs about “personal and political freedoms” in Australia’s Parliament House, ABC News reports.
The group performed the songs while wearing gags in protest.
The Guardian has a good article by David Fickling about the Latham ascendancy. The comparison with Tony Blair reads like it was written just for me:
So there should be a lesson for Australia in those comparisons between Latham and Tony Blair. Next to the priggish figure of the British prime minister, the sharp-tongued battler from western Sydney may seem attractive to the left, but it is Blair’s third way, rather than Whitlam’s socialism, that Latham has marked out as his political model. Those who now flock to support his tilt against John Howard may find in the long term that their white knight is a very different character to the one they had hoped for.
The leader of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, Dr Abdul Qadir Khan, has admitted that he passed nuclear secrets to Libya, North Korea and Iran. It appears that he did so with the knowledge, encouragement and support of the Pakistani military. Given that Pakistan is about two steps removed from being a military dictatorship, for “military”, I think we can substitute “government” without much fear of contradiction.
Let me summarise: Pakistan, a country which really does have weapons of mass destruction, has been passing nuclear technology to the whole of the Axis of Evil.
President Bush says: ” “.
Prime Minister Blair says: ” “.
Prime Minister Howard says: ” “.
Pakistan, of course, is a key US ally. We won’t be going to war with Pakistan any more than we’ll be going to war with Israel.
Hypocrisy is no longer merely common, it’s normative.
From morons.org:
You may have heard that although CBS plans to run ads for erectile dysfunction and the White House drug policy office (which has brought us ads suggesting that smoking pot is akin to causing mass murder by aiding terrorists), it won’t be showing the winning Bush in 30 Seconds ad, “Child’s Pay” which says “guess who’s going to pay off Bush’s $1 trillion deficit” after showing children working in menial jobs.
You can see the ad that CBS thinks is too “controversial” for TV at www.bushin30seconds.org.
Doug Cameron, the colourful national secretary of the AMWU, at the ALP national conference this morning (via Crikey):
The elite drool from every orifice at the thought of a free trade deal with the US. The Premiers are even worse. I reckon there’s some Pavlovian science going on here.
It’s one of the better lines from Labor’s annual talkfest/scragfight. Julia Gillard was very much in her element waving about a leaked memo sent by the government to the pointy heads at Medicare state offices, warning that if the national health system’s 20th birthday is to be celebrated with a cake, government MPs must not be photographed sticking the knife in:
What this email is telling us, as clearly as any other action by the Howard Government, is Australians know when a conservative politician, when John Howard or Tony Abbott get anywhere near Medicare and they’ve got a knife in their hand, they’ve only got one purpose and that is to destroy Medicare by chopping it up. (ABC News)
The Vatican has spoken out against pharmaceutical companies which make huge profits from anti-AIDS drugs, saying that moral reasons mean the companies should offer the drugs at lower prices.
On the other hand, the Vatican also claimed last October that people with HIV should not use condoms “because they have tiny holes in them through which HIV can pass.”
Nothing like a little papist hypocrisy to start the day.
Maureen Dowd in Thursday’s New York Times:
Can you believe President Bush is still pushing the cockamamie claim that we went to war in Iraq with a real coalition rather than a gaggle of poodles and lackeys?
Apologies to the poodle fanciers out there. Poodles are intelligent creatures.
(Über-crappy photoshop by yours truly)
Q. When it comes to gay issues, what makes you a better presidential candidate?
A. I’ve been in the armed forces. I’ve been at the very center of the firestorm. I know what it’s like out there. And I’ve had people who have come up to see me about it since I’ve been out [of the service] — gay and lesbian people who need help.
Free trade. It sounds like such an innocuous concept. You let my products into your country, and I’ll do the same for you. If only it were so simple.
Australia and the United States are in the final stage of negotiations to enter a free trade agreement. While you’d imagine (rightly) that any such agreement would surely favour the interests of the big, powerful economy at the expense of the small, here in Australia we’ve been told that free trade with the US will be good for our economy, will stimulate growth, expand employment, bring investment, remove the salt from the Murray and turn the rivers inwards to irrigate the parched deserts … and anyone who can’t see this is a dill.
Well, call me a dill, ’cause I can’t see it.
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