tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36191512011-04-21T15:09:19.801-07:00blogorrhoeapolitical economic and cultural observations in the register of dismal dilettantismRobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comBlogger2301100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1112360319969691782005-04-01T04:38:00.000-08:002005-09-29T21:14:17.460-07:00I am informed the new Blogorrhoea is completely and permanently kaput. This unfortunate event has coincided with one or two others at the blogoshed, so a protracted silence is indicated. Ceteris reasonably paribus, blogorrhoeaic dismarrhoea should resume in the Spring.BFN and iyi geceler, arkadaslar.Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1107178943075372722005-01-31T05:09:00.000-08:002005-02-05T22:53:27.763-08:00SLOW GOING
The ol' difference engine has thrown its last sprocket, so please don'tbother e-mailing until I send the new e-dress down the line.
In grim solidarity with Australia's most heroic borrowers (the fearlessburghers of the adjacent ACT) I shall be swiping a card at a new e-Mac nextweek. Dashing Dave Tiley andhis mate Sam had built a lovely new home for me but, alas, technical Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1101312563062857632004-11-24T07:56:00.000-08:002004-11-24T08:09:23.063-08:00A QUESTION CONCERNING INFLATION
One good thing about inflation is that the dollars you owe lose value while the value of at least some of what you bought with 'em doesn't.
The US dollar is in free fall just now and it occurs to me that Alan Greenspan might just sit back and let it fall for precisely that reason. It wouldn't be a costless policy, but it might just be better than hiking Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1100784181246910912004-11-18T05:17:00.000-08:002004-11-18T05:23:01.246-08:00ASSORTED DISMAL BLEATS OCCASIONED BY AN AVERAGE DAY'S BLOGSURF
VALE MARGARET HASSAN
Tim reminds us a wonderful woman has been brutally butchered. Tim is opposed to needless wars, and is not being inconsistent in bewailing the viciousness of this murder. Of course, if needless wars are okay be you, as long as it's 'our' side starting 'em, you need to be reminded of the brutal butchery of aboutRobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1100619884198146132004-11-16T07:33:00.000-08:002004-11-16T07:44:44.200-08:00TO BE FILED UNDER "SUCCINCT SUMMARIES"
By
hiring Allawi we've already pretty much admitted that Saddam was the right man for the job, because Allawi is just a midget version of Saddam with the beard shaved and the American flag stamped on his forehead. Which is why he'll never get the respect he needs to run the place -- the Iraqis see him as our puppet. Old ladies would tear him limb from limbRobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1100444002822480932004-11-14T06:43:00.000-08:002004-11-14T06:53:22.823-08:00LAZY SUNDAY AFTERNOON
When you have a day that doesn't quite work - doesn't quite compensate you for getting up, I mean - it's usually not news worthy of imposition on anything up to seven innocent readers. After all, we all have 'em. And it's not as if my Sunday has been That Bad. It's just that today was the first day in a good while that might have been all good.
I stayed in bed till lateRobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1100186461582556842004-11-11T06:03:00.000-08:002004-11-11T07:21:01.583-08:00LEST WE KEEP FORGETTING
Eighty-six years ago a war that need never have started, and could not then be stopped until one side was broken by sheer attrition, ended ... thus putting in place the conditions for another. A Colonel Repington knew as much in 1919, when he proposed as a name for the grand tragedy just passed 'The First World War'.
Even then, wars didn't start, and weren't conducted, Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1099747532916919362004-11-06T05:17:00.000-08:002004-11-06T05:25:32.916-08:00SATURDAY NIGHT HAVER: A LEFTY EXPLODES
Look, the US election was a close one, not a landslide, and only 37% of the US considers itself 'reborn', not the whole country! So let's not fall over ourselves jettisoning all we hold dear to fit in with some brand new social reality, eh? It's taken the neocons decades to get us where we are, and it's not yet entirely where they want us to be. 63% of Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1099739518668813532004-11-06T03:10:00.000-08:002004-11-06T03:11:58.666-08:00VALE JOHN WARREN
He did the show on Sunday - fighting for what little breath was left him, but talking sense and substance right up to the show's closing minute, when Les Murray seamlessly finished a sentence for him just as JW's deathless enthusiasm finally threatened to take him a word further than his atrophied lungs would allow. I thought then it might be a moment I'd have to remember, and Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1099069593277623972004-10-29T10:02:00.000-07:002004-11-04T04:06:51.540-08:00JUST IN FROM THE TALLY ROOM
The neo-cons' invasion causes 100 000 'excess deaths'.
That's just the 'excess' slaughter, mind you ...
And what does our noble Minister for Offence have to say about it? "Unfortunately there will always be, always be some civilian casualties."
Not if you don't bomb 'em just like Western Civilisation did when it killed 250000 of 'em last time or impoverish 'em, Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1098800603353759872004-10-26T07:21:00.000-07:002004-10-26T07:23:23.353-07:00Vale John Peel
A kick in the teeth for Beeb listeners everywhere: John's influence has towered over the development of popular music for nearly four decades and his contribution to modern music and music culture is immeasurable.
When I was a twelve-year-old in Namibia, the man who introduced me to Pink Floyd was John Peel. When I was a thirteen-year-old in England, the man who introduced me Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1098718676426513022004-10-25T07:44:00.000-07:002004-10-25T08:37:56.426-07:00NOTHING TO SEE HERE, FOLKS
Late October to mid-November is blaryngitis month here at blogorrhoea. In my line of work, the office calls loudest when the outdoors are sweetest.
More thrilling tales of debt, deceit and decay a coupla weeks hence, then.
And mebbe a bit more gratuitous filth and idle observation, too. I've been scoring consistently well on the dismalism brief, but have Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1097858753082470502004-10-15T09:41:00.000-07:002004-10-15T09:45:53.083-07:00APROPOS NOT A LOT
I've just given the blogoshed a big old print of a square-rigger chasing a lateen schooner downwind into an early 19th century dusk and I've been watching Last Tango In Paris. Had to consult Danny Peary's *Guide For The Film Fanatic* afterwards to check I'd not been wasting my time and was most gratified to discover I hadn't.
I'm very pleased with the AU2 Falcon that Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1097472212363833212004-10-10T22:21:00.000-07:002004-10-10T22:23:32.363-07:00I AM NOT TAKING THIS WELL
A weekend's contented trudging, nibbling and sipping my way through the Blue Mountains has come to an end (I especially recommend the Fairfax track just behind Blackheath, btw - the panoramic vista waiting for you at the end of that gratifyingly short trundle is beyond the reach of words), and I am (somewhat reluctantly) returned to the Australia of pollies and bloggersRobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1096980094184678982004-10-05T05:40:00.000-07:002004-10-05T05:41:34.186-07:00PLAY HARD: MAKING INTEREST RATES WORK FOR LABOR
Is it just me, or has the ALP advertising team dropped the ball on the whole interest rates thingy? Howard says Labor's bad for interest rates 'coz you've only to look at what happened last time, and all Labor responds with is a series of ads which
(a) keep reminding us of Howard's 'message';
(b) cite mostly unnamed 'experts' to claim they'll beRobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1096773332794913752004-10-02T20:07:00.000-07:002004-10-02T20:15:32.793-07:00RATIONAL(ISING) RITUAL
It's my habit on Epsom Day to patronise the Eagle Hawk Hotel, park the buns before the TAB screens, pick half the Randwick card, steadfastly refuse to bet on a single one of 'em ... heroically investing instead at Flemington, where I invariably fail miserably.
Don't mock. As the Chinese almost say, the journey of a thousand miles begins with but one ruinous bender. 'Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1096639971377285812004-10-01T07:12:00.000-07:002004-10-01T07:12:51.376-07:00EN PASSANT
The China Daily's Jiang Ruiping has an interesting article up. Here's a taste: During the 1992-2001 period, the average US current account deficit was US$189.9 billion. In 2002 and 2003, however, the figure soared to US$473.9 billion and US$530.7 billion respectively ... Given the huge US current account deficit, the US dollar, if it is to remain relatively stable, must be backed upRobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1096636411330936392004-10-01T06:09:00.000-07:002004-10-01T06:13:31.330-07:00LIES, DAMNED LIES AND ASTONISHMENT
Senator Dianne Feinstein waxes indignantly astonished:
"I want to express my profound dismay about reports that officials from your administration and your reelection campaign were 'heavily involved' in writing parts of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's speech ... You may be
surprised by this, Mr. President, but I viewed Prime Minister Allawi's speech as an Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1096293497903312012004-09-27T06:51:00.000-07:002004-09-27T06:58:17.903-07:00AMERICA AND AUSTRALIA: THOUGHTS AND EMOTIONS
Something a lot bigger than common sense is obviously at work in the US and Australian election campaigns, else they'd be well and truly over by now.
If the much touted 'rule of law' (for the purported sake of which a million Iraqis have died since 1990) meant anything I'd understand as such, Bush and his unterfibbers would be facing judges, not Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1096118300654184532004-09-25T06:16:00.000-07:002004-09-25T06:18:20.653-07:00EXPORTING DEMOCRACY: ACT 4 Scene 1
I don't know whether Negroponte and Allawi are bent on cancelling the elections altogether after the US election, or merely exempting carefully selected areas and candidates from the democratic process. I don't even know if they know yet. But I am convinced that this paragraph constitutes proof that 'succinct' and 'nuanced' are not natural enemies: "Neither Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1095329457490427382004-09-16T02:57:00.000-07:002004-09-16T03:10:57.490-07:00YESTERDAY'S NEWS
Well it seems we've already buried Mazin Tumaisi and his supporting cast of little corpses, then.
It seems we live in a time and a place in which explicit 'live' footage of the murder of children and journalists is merely of rapidly passing interest. Even when it's "our" side doing the murdering.
Especially then.
When the slaughter, terror and anguish is hidden under Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1095101457169947132004-09-13T11:24:00.000-07:002004-09-13T11:50:57.170-07:00WHAT HAVE WE WROUGHT?
It takes a blogger of sound morale and strong stomach to follow Cursor's daily sojourn around the grounds. Here are the thoughts that happened to me as I tried it today ...
26-year-old Mazin Tumaisi's transition from young-journalist-at-scene to yet-another-bloody-corpse-on-an-Iraqi-street should be a big story because it happened right in front of a Reuters camera. Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1094234347240309422004-09-03T10:52:00.000-07:002004-09-05T21:42:12.806-07:00SHOULDA KNOWN BETTER
Dzhokar Dudayev declared Chechnya's independence in 1991. Just like Shevardnaze did next door, in Georgia. But Moscow killed Dudayev - in April 1996, with an air-to-ground missile fixed on the bloke's satellite phone signal.
Dudayev may have been a passionate nationalist, but he was no reactionary theocrat. After all, he'd been a bomber pilot in the Soviet Air Force, Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1093972611930398252004-08-31T10:05:00.000-07:002004-08-31T19:48:47.466-07:00OBLIGATORY PUNDITRY
Elections don't do it for me - not like they used to, anyway. Two reasons, really:
(1) where's the future in a 'Rob's Party' when poll-pixie-par-excellance Antony Green reveals all before you've peeled the scab off your first lolly? How fondly do I remember the days when the next three years (or some period within eighteen months of that) would hang in the balance well Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1093632144861362472004-08-27T10:18:00.000-07:002004-08-31T19:51:27.296-07:00ENFORCED BLOGGERY
If the definition of virtue is not something very like working back until 2.30 on a Saturday morning, I misunderstand completely the ethical priorities of modern society (wasn't it Keynes who remarked that the only one of The Seven Deadly Sins still deemed naughty was 'sloth'?)
Which qualifies the person who stole my lovely uninsured Falcon from the carpark of a place of Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1092475583558086342004-08-14T02:09:00.000-07:002004-08-14T07:55:00.856-07:00INHERITANCE
To live under the Howard regime is everyday to awaken freshly appalled. To watch Labor accommodate the creature's every expedient cynicism and antisocial smear is just too much. I find myself with nothing to say of our present that is not legally proscribed (what would not qualify as hate speech would still dock me on grounds of obscenity) and nothing of our future that would not Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1092473506383977282004-08-14T01:49:00.000-07:002004-08-14T08:00:19.440-07:00THE DEVIL CAN CITE SCRIPTURE FOR HIS PURPOSE
For my part, I prefer Shakespeare, who convinces me all is a twice-told tale when he observes that thieves for their robbery have authority when judges steal themselves.
And on horror's head, horrors accumulate. Unless one reads the blogs
where today's better bards abide, one is nowadays consigned to a reality fashioned of lies, past and present.Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1090846643897538502004-07-26T05:55:00.000-07:002004-07-26T05:57:23.896-07:00NO TRIAL
There once lived a writer who gazed into the future and made a name for himself tracing the bewildering sojourns of hapless little individuals as they fall into the gargantuan maws of pointless rational organisations, pointlessly and rationally executing the bureaucratic and totalitarian procedures they are there pointlessly and rationally to impose. Cute of the US Navy, then, to Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1090778213432788082004-07-25T10:54:00.000-07:002004-07-25T10:56:53.433-07:00BRITISH LABOUR (1900 - 2004)
Perhaps Tory Blur is right about the sixties being the root of all the evils that now stalk the world. Perhaps he's not talking any old rubbish to take our minds off the pig's breakfast he's made of his turn at the levers. Perhaps the world really would be a better place if anyone unmale, unwhite, uncapitalised, unwell or uneducated in 1959 could only have been Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1090078782570072722004-07-17T08:23:00.000-07:002004-07-17T08:39:42.570-07:00THWARTED THOUGHTS
Thought the Kangaroos would beat Carlton today. But then, I also thought Blogger wouldn't randomly insert gaps into the code whenever I hit 'save template'.
A scrotum-shrivelling wind is blowing from pole to blogoshed, I'm upset, and I'm going to bed.Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1088518959357544982004-06-29T07:19:00.000-07:002004-06-29T07:22:39.356-07:00G'DAY!
I can not let go the opportunity to complain. So I'll let you know it'll be another three weeks or so before blogorrhoea moans into life again and then gratuitously aver I'm thoroughly tired of ghastly tales of imperial intrigue, client despots, mass killings, death squads, sanctioned prison torture programmes, and generalised human rights violations.
So I'm not going to say a word Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1080477690689750712004-03-28T04:38:00.000-08:002004-03-28T04:44:58.186-08:00POSTING SUSPENDED.
Full service to be resumed in July.
Best to all,
Rob.
Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1079272595582511402004-03-14T05:52:00.000-08:002004-06-23T08:44:13.743-07:00TERRORISM ON ALL SIDES: CULTURE'S VENGEANCE?
[ONE LAST GIGA-RANT BEFORE AN EXTENDED HIATUS]
Gary Sauer-Thompson has been making some very good yards of late. Running off half-backs like Don Watson and John Ralston-Saul helps, of course, but good on him. His mention of ol' Max Weber's idea of 'the iron cage of bureaucratic rationality' has kick-started some blogorrhoeaic musings about all this Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1078115589377619882004-02-29T20:32:00.000-08:002004-02-29T20:37:45.950-08:00GETTING AWAY (WITH IT AGAIN)
I see Aristide has 'fled' Haiti.
Apparently because he couldn't flee the guns of the US marines sent to take him, his democratic legitimacy, his distrust of US plans for the region, and his insistence on a minimum wage for Haitian workers out of the picture.
It's a good thing Washington based its promulgated intelligence on honest disinterested informants this Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1077382244206873192004-02-21T08:47:00.000-08:002004-02-21T08:53:24.293-08:00SOUND OF SILENCE
Yes, it's been quiet.
Too quiet.
And much blaryngitis still to come, I fear. All manner of ugly imposts mock me from my immediate future and they must be confronted now, lest they promote themselves to regrets, which mock forever.
Ere scrofulous blogorrhoea lapses grudgingly into fitful hiatus, I should take this opportunity to:
- suggest to those of you who dress to Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1076396381018622102004-02-09T22:56:00.000-08:002004-02-09T23:02:05.826-08:00HOW FETTERED THE FREE TRADER?
Half of Ozplogistan is chattering about the 'Free' 'Trade' 'Agreement', so I guess I should, too. It won't take me long because we don't know what the real document's 500 pages actually hold, and to speak in detail of a deal whose details are denied us would be silly.
So please allow me to shed some general darkness on proceedings. This I will do by way of Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1075900343504261962004-02-04T05:09:00.000-08:002004-02-04T05:14:41.356-08:00WHEN SCAPEGOATS RETIRE
Erstwhile head of the nuclear, chemical and biological branch of the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS), Brian Jones has looked into the future and seen a big pile of poo coming at him.
He knows that when the going gets tough, power has a brutal way of distancing itself from responsibility.
And if the 'wmd' schemozzle isn't going to be the fault of messrs Blair, Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1075382124027678652004-01-29T05:11:00.000-08:002004-01-31T03:27:16.513-08:00OF RESPONSIBILITY AND INFERENCES
It [the dossier] concludes that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, that Saddam has continued to produce them, that he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes ... and that he is actively trying to acquire nuclear weapons capability.
Thus did Tony Blair (try to) sell Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1074922105042335172004-01-23T21:26:00.000-08:002004-01-23T21:30:27.700-08:00A DINGO'S BREAKFAST
The Mac is sick and the blogger is busy. The prospect of a shiny new Mac and a blogger with the time to blog on it doth nick the horizon, but horizons are far in this wide brown land. Until then, I'll just have to phone 'em in as opportunity and technology allow. Here's what I've been reading of late. All well written, all in stark contradiction to what we're invited to Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1074609419922913462004-01-20T06:27:00.000-08:002004-01-20T06:38:57.826-08:00AN ENTRY
29 February 1667: Up betimes, and to the exchange, there to take a pot
beyond thirst with those most happily circumstanced by the victory.
Great store these worthy gentlemen set by burnt Dutch ships, and great
indeed was their mirth. To luncheon, and after luncheon many cups more,
to a worth of twelve and twenty shillings. Happy to be held in such
high esteem by fellows of interest, Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1074182747446298632004-01-15T08:04:00.000-08:002004-01-15T08:08:37.280-08:00I READ A BOOK!
Smoking is the only addiction for which my ridiculous lifestyle (ie that of an Australian middle class employed parent circa 2004) affords the time (yes, I know it squares the ledger eventually, but you know what I mean). I know I'd excel at a host of others and, in the unlikely event I outlive the economic need to deny myself, the list of things in which I'd repetitively and Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1073658776654288732004-01-09T06:23:00.000-08:002004-01-15T08:32:41.700-08:00OF NEOCONS AND THINK-TANKS
Professor Juan Cole, history professor at Michigan University, observed recently that, "I see a parade of people from these institutes coming through as talking heads [on cable TV]. I very seldom see a professor from a university on those shows … Academics [at universities] are involved in analysing what's going on but they're not advocates, so they don't have the sameRobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1073570109133165072004-01-08T05:33:00.000-08:002004-01-08T08:15:12.216-08:00OF VAGIES AND PENIES
or
FEAR AND LOATHING IN THE SELF
I've felt moved to discourse on 'the market' and matters sexual before. Usually because no-one gives a blurt what I think about capitalism, and I'm not above garnishing the meat and two veg with a bit of what it takes.
Obviously.
Anyway, sex has never been easy for humans. For rabbits, it's easy. For creatures who produce and endure Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1072708636961939272003-12-29T06:24:00.000-08:002003-12-29T06:38:45.733-08:00APOLITICAL FILLER
It's nipple-drenchingly hot here in the blogoshed and I don't know what to write about.
I do remember a difficult conversation I had in an Istanbul drinking house about 32 months ago. Difficult, because I don't often meet a fellow who finds fascinating everything I find fascinating and because even less often do I meet one with whom I'm obliged to share these fascinations Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1072356785231388082003-12-25T04:51:00.000-08:002003-12-25T04:54:28.420-08:00G'DAY
Well, I'm back in the blogoshed just in time to wish you both a deliriously excessive Christmas and a new year that will doubtlessly pan out much better than I expect.
Unfortunately, the possums holidayed in the shed during my absence and my books are all over the place, festooned in little possump-turdlettes.
Sorry the Turkish posts stopped so suddenly - never got near a computer Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1070706947919256952003-12-06T02:35:00.000-08:002003-12-06T02:36:46.356-08:00ANKARA 2
Thýs traffic doesn't half kick up a blanket of smog! Ýt's a good thing so many Turks smoke, as it's all that keeps the air breathable. Had fun at the Maltepe bazaar yesterday. At 2.12 pm, the place ýs full of pýrated software, electronic games and DVDs. A shout goes up at 2.13, and by 2.14 a host of stalls have dýsappeared behind rollerdoors and tarpaulýns. By 2.30 all ýs as beforeRobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1070560386477170112003-12-04T09:53:00.000-08:002003-12-05T11:50:05.670-08:00ANKARA
Ankara is, for the most part, brand new. Attaturk hurriedly began building the minute he had a nation-state for which to build a capital. No complaints, mind, but methinks he built it a skerrick on the small side for the four millions who inhabit the place now. Crossing the road here is only for those with sharp senses, immaculate timing, nimble feet and a goodly dollop of that TurkishRobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1070199399189759062003-11-30T05:36:00.000-08:002003-12-05T11:53:06.403-08:00MERHABA BLOGGERLAR!
Thirty hours of squirming from buttock to buttock and fantasising about cigarettes, two twenty-minute sessions of stamping from foot to foot whilst actually smoking cigarettes, and three showings of 'Pirates of the Carribean' later, yours Not-At-All-Dismally-Just-At-The-Moment drags contentedly at a Maltepe, sips delicately at a cai and blogs adjectivally at you from Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1069330693812152152003-11-20T04:17:00.000-08:002003-11-20T04:18:50.356-08:00SIGH
If you were as busy as I am you wouldn't even bother to issue this hiatus alert.
So there.
Coupla administrative notes while I'm here, though ...
Erstwhile Armadillo, rugby tragic, rock sentimentalist and all-round thorn-in-the-jackboot-of-the-Australian-Right Chris Shiel would have it known he is now flying solo. Humbly suggest a visit to accomplished Melbournian eclecticist and Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1068781981933737722003-11-13T19:30:00.000-08:002003-11-15T18:17:40.513-08:00TOO MUCH AUBREY AND MATURIN IS NEVER ENOUGH
My never-ending quest for quality literature has inevitably brought me to blogorrhoea's archives. Would it not be interesting, I'd thought, to see what we were saying as the inevitable slaughter in Iraq drew close.
Well, as it happens, those against were saying pretty well what we're saying now.
The worst thing about being a dismalist is that Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1068470810000377452003-11-10T05:24:00.000-08:002003-11-10T05:28:44.030-08:00IT IS A TRUTH UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED ...
... that a blogger in his cups should not his Power Mac broach.
Aye, Mistress Jane. And if he desist, he is a blogger not ...
______________________________
PANTS OFF ...
... to Rampaging Roy Slaven and his latest tour de force, Marking Time. The maestro got the dialogue just right, and whoever did the casting nailed it with a jackhammer. Every Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1067583731868491332003-10-30T23:02:00.000-08:002003-10-30T23:08:33.653-08:00MEMORANDA
by Glenn Condell
MEMO: IRB
OK, are we serious about this being a 'World' Cup or aren't we?
You can't keep chuntering on about the 'spirit' and 'colour' the lesser teams bring to the occasion and how vital it is to 'spread the rugby gospel' on the on hand and give them such a shoddy deal on the other. You can't on bemoan 80 point differentials while at the same time doing nothing Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1067435364177609012003-10-29T05:48:00.000-08:002003-10-29T22:53:25.950-08:00AN INTERVIEW
The ghost of Karl Marx lives! A wonderful read and a lovely crash course in The Great Thinkers, much in the gentle tones Big Karl reserved for them when he was alive.
Interview courtesy of Donald Sassoon and Prospect Magazine
Heads-up courtesy of Norm GerasRobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1067174203918553462003-10-26T05:08:00.000-08:002003-10-29T22:52:38.450-08:00COMING CLEAN ABOUT THE YARTZ
Regular readers might be disappointed to find that Yours Dismally can be something of a proudly conservative philistine.
Now, don't get me wrong. I like a good building. Good building has a long history. It was around when they put together the Parthenon (it's wise to have a puny human's point of view in mind when knocking up large public buildings) and it was Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1066492646458744292003-10-18T08:11:00.000-07:002003-10-18T08:57:25.876-07:00HIATUS STATUS
Just as busy as when last I issued an hiatus alert, only now I have to mow grass, too. Just dropped in to let you know my Melbourne Cup trifecta ticket might well have Distinctly Secret, Makybe Diva, Mummify and Zagalia typed on it; that Washington needs urgently to get a clue in the Middle East (a self-styled medieval crusader for a general, Turkish troops on Arab soil and no Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1065963779466535922003-10-12T05:37:00.000-07:002003-10-12T06:02:59.593-07:00VALE JIM CAIRNS
Jim Cairns made economics sound interesting and politics sound worthwhile. How Labor could've done with a Jim Cairns over this last wasted year!
He knew a murderous war of aggression when he saw one. And he knew more about economics - and what it's for- than the stuffed suits that command the teetering heights nowadays. The fact that the Right still so volubly loathe him Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1065797164154150962003-10-10T07:41:00.000-07:002003-10-10T07:46:03.710-07:00A HOWARD TRIUMPH ...
... in search of which we must go back nearly five years and have a good look. And then resume our search ...
In response to a comment Jack Strocchi has posted below Tim's latest classic spray, I thought a timeline of the fabled liberation of East Timor would help highlight the Howard government's heroic role there-in (I've gleaned most of this from John Lyons's 'The Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1065615779767617072003-10-08T05:19:00.000-07:002003-10-08T05:22:59.610-07:00JOINING THE WEIRD MOB
Like many wogs (or am I a clog?), I've long strived to be accepted in this wide brown land. Some of the job came easily enough. I've a deep suspicion of authority, a bit of a potty mouth, an irrational affection for football and cricket, a thin wallet at Spring Carnival's end, a shed out the back, and the beginnings of a verandah over the toyshop. A wife and two kids, a Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1064668646357945442003-09-27T05:58:00.000-07:002003-09-27T06:17:26.283-07:00HIATUS ALERT
Although I can't promise to refrain entirely from indignant spluttering, I shall be very quiet over the next few weeks. Back when reality permits.
Rob.
Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1063986925545490302003-09-19T08:42:00.000-07:002003-09-19T08:55:24.960-07:00ON MAKING FRIENDS AND INFLUENCING PEOPLE
Fellow serial suspicious squinter and chronic distruster of besuited power everywhere, Xymphora, reckons Washington has squandered a lot of brownie points of late, and I'm riffing off that here. Methinks the neocons have waaay underestimated the importance of what Joseph Nye calls 'soft power'. Methinks also that the people most likely to make such Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1063979670191956262003-09-19T06:53:00.000-07:002003-09-19T06:54:29.600-07:00GRUNTGRAB OF THE WAR
The grab I remember from GW1 was delivered by a British flying officer as he climbed down from his Tornado's cockpit.. Asked how well his mission had gone, he mingled relief at his survival with impatience at the question with a curt "we're back, aren't we?"
The grab I shall remember from GW2 comes from Sergeant Moja Vera, whose last day in Iraq prompts a rambling reverie Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1063613529329852932003-09-15T01:12:00.000-07:002003-09-15T01:12:45.813-07:00THE TERRIBLE TWINS
By Glenn Condell
Terrorism and neoconservatism are the twin perils of our age; yet despite their opposition, they really are twins; a double-headed hydra from the Middle East. They are the inverse and obverse of the same coin and their currency is a fight to the death, a deadly dance that now involves us all, wherever we are. They're certainly not identical twins, but they Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1063381202217576342003-09-12T08:31:00.000-07:002003-09-12T08:40:02.116-07:00The wonderful Blogger on the Cast-Iron Balcony offers these timesaving excerpts from Salam Pax and Riverbend's latest offerings from Free Iraq.
Awful.
Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1063297323866606612003-09-11T09:11:00.000-07:002003-09-11T09:22:03.826-07:00DON'T DO AS THE ROMANS DID
The always impressive Chalmers Johnson takes to heart Ike Eisenhower's warning about the rise of the military industrial complex and looks to the decline of the Roman Republic for a few tips. Morsels such as these ensue:
"The militarism that inescapably accompanied Rome's imperial projects slowly undermined its constitution as well as the very considerable political Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1063008356609988752003-09-08T01:05:00.000-07:002003-09-08T01:05:56.590-07:00WORRYING BUNGLES
In trying to respond to Gummo Trotsky's plea for bloggers' lists of Great Australian Blunders, it occurs to me nearly all of them might properly be filed under 'Cultural Cringe'. Here's a loose, hurried and under-substantiated manifest of gripes with which to sink noble Potemkin's plimsoll line:
ECONOMICS: In their attempt to keep our betters at the Bank of England happy, Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1062997624902138022003-09-07T22:07:00.000-07:002003-09-07T22:07:04.916-07:00WOE-WALLOWING
Immiserating the unemployed and obliging the working class to finance its carefully nurtured aspirations with debt was an economic model that was never going to last forever. For those who produce our world's economic common sense, the bursting of the credit bubble is not overly frightening. They made out like bandits while the going was good, and, as long as their portfolios Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1062767135334795772003-09-05T06:05:00.000-07:002003-09-05T06:05:35.333-07:00WHAT NOW?
Like so very many (well, very many outside the mainstream media and the US 'policy community', anyway), Yours Dismally has always suspected that Iraq would be a tragically insoluble mess the minute the Coalition officially went in. In the name of avenging (and allegedly preventing its like in future) the crime that slaughtered three thousand, we have so far killed perhaps a dozen Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1062767093629704312003-09-05T06:04:00.000-07:002003-09-05T06:04:53.623-07:00WHAT NOW?
Like so very many (well, very many outside the mainstream media and the US 'policy community', anyway), Yours Dismally has always suspected that Iraq would be a tragically insoluble mess the minute the Coalition officially went in. In the name of avenging (and allegedly preventing its like in future) the crime that slaughtered three thousand, we have so far killed perhaps a dozen Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1062691769274129112003-09-04T09:09:00.000-07:002003-09-04T09:09:29.233-07:00LINKAGE
The opportunity for some good ol' self-indulgent bloggery draweth nigh. Until then, please pop by these new jewels of the Blogosphere. From Europe comes the singularly promising collective Fistful of Euros. From the US of A comes the Blog de Force that is Conceptual Guerilla. And a hearty Ozplogistani welcome to the immensely readable For Crying Out Loud.
Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-106246002128507922003-09-01T16:47:00.000-07:002003-09-01T16:47:01.173-07:00Testing. Here's hoping blogorrhoea's finally behaving itself again ...
three quick thoughts while I'm here, though.
1) I've had cause to talk about reliance on technology in sport before - that it finds as many contentious moments in millimetres as the naked eye did in centimetres and that the umpire/referee has lost so much authority to the electronic sensor that s/he no longer has the Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1062418924698635112003-09-01T05:22:00.000-07:002003-09-01T05:22:04.670-07:00PLEBISCITE.COM
by Glenn Condell
Improving the quality of our democracy, very much off the
top of the head:
'Easyvote'
A nationally accessible, federally funded and promoted website (provisional
name 'Easyvote') where indicative plebiscites on any issue can be conducted,
with a publicly viewable audit trail of voter email addresses to prevent
stacking and other skulduggery. It would need a Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1061655617094116122003-08-23T09:20:00.000-07:002003-08-23T09:22:05.306-07:00A LIST
Blogorrhoea's Blog HeroTim Dunlop once opined that a blogger not prepared to get personal or sexy would be well advised to produce lists if they wanted to be read and have their comments boxes filled. As I can't do personal and sexy at the same time, I've downed half a bottle of Jamesons and opted for a list. Below is a response to Scott Wickstein's request to Ozbloggers to present Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1061568085609199092003-08-22T09:01:00.000-07:002003-08-22T09:05:10.326-07:00HISTORY MATTERS
We in the west - so many of us, genuinely well-meaning people - are not good at imagining how others might see us. I suspect the US are worse at it than anyone. But perhaps the 'light-on-the-obvious-security' UN, doomed ever to be linked in so many 'third-world' imaginations to the very government which has sought to emasculate it, aren't very good at it, either.
Certainly, Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1061303121620303262003-08-19T07:25:00.000-07:002003-08-19T07:25:21.570-07:00'NEOCON': TOWARDS A QUOTATIVE DEFINITION
Ken Parish is having trouble defining 'neocon'. Thought I might enlist the help of a few DWMs to help him out ...
The neocon position on The State, courtesy of Plato: "The ideal society we have described can never grow into a reality or see the light of day, and there will be no end to the troubles of states, or indeed of humanity itself, till Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1061295279573103892003-08-19T05:14:00.000-07:002003-08-19T05:14:39.573-07:00SURPRISE!
Apologies for reality-induced silence from the blogoshed (I'll try to make up for some of that later tonight), but I just had to let blogorrheaders know that the test screening returns are in for Peter Weir's upcoming blockbuster Master & Commander. Granted, there's still time for the philistines at head office to give in to the censorious bleatings of what philistines there might Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1060525065675496512003-08-10T07:17:00.000-07:002003-08-10T07:19:40.050-07:00WAR, MYTH & NATIONAL IDENTITY: A SHAPELESS RAMBLE
As Scott Wickstein observes, during this week falls the 85th anniversary of the Battle of Amiens, of which gargantuan slaughter (50000 boys dead or wounded) German General Ludendorff would write, 'August 8th was the black day of the German Army ... put the decline of [German] fighting power beyond all doubt ... the war must be ended'. (*My War Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1060492896891881012003-08-09T22:21:00.000-07:002003-08-09T22:21:36.843-07:00WHAT I LEARNED FROM THE GENERAL TODAY
General Glut is the sorta bloke I was always going to like. Likes the Marxian critique of capitalist political economy, wallows shamelessly in his dismarrhoea, regularly reads Morgan Stanley permabear Stephen Roach and doesn't mind the role of Cassandra.
Quoth Roach: "In the most recent quarter, Hill said, revenue for the Standard & Poor's 500 companiesRobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1060444137153648322003-08-09T08:48:00.000-07:002003-08-09T08:48:56.980-07:00LOSE-LOSE SCENARRHOEA
We’re here forever. The simple fact about the New Iraq is that never in our lifetimes will it be able to defend itself from its neighbors. It will always be dependent on the United States to do that job. And because it floats on oil, and because all its neighbors — and all of us — have a vital stake in its future, it’s going to take a lot of defending.
'Course, I reckon Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1060310253187936002003-08-07T19:37:00.000-07:002003-08-07T19:37:33.073-07:00A STAB AT AN ANSWER
by Glenn Condell
In a comment after my last trick, Chins asked:
'Why is it, do you think, that we don't demand answers to pollies' lies and clarification of their obfuscation and spin? Is it to do with a sense of powerlessness?'
Lots of reasons. One might just be fear. The events of the last few years may have driven some of us to engage more directly in our relationships Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1060170984045260422003-08-06T04:56:00.000-07:002003-08-06T04:56:59.730-07:00(MAL)ADMINISTRATIVE NOTE
I have dared enter the template and mess with its mysterious guts, so this may be the last you hear of us. If all has gone well, a working comments facility is back. If not, forgive me for I knew not what I did.Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1060098885808239372003-08-05T08:54:00.000-07:002003-08-05T08:57:05.133-07:00TOO POOPED TO BLOG
* Six weeks of being well enough to get to work, sick enough not to do it very well, and then drained enough not to be up to much else. So inert was I this evening that I sat right through an episode of The Bill. What life this turkey ever had is well and truly extinct, yet the bride (a woman of otherwise exemplary discernment) insists on watching it decompose twice a week.Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1060095333271901182003-08-05T07:55:00.000-07:002003-08-05T15:42:06.430-07:00A COUPLA SHORT SPRAYS
by Glenn Condell
SIBLING SPAT
A few weeks ago (see Upside Down below), I drew together the views of a few dyed in the wool conservatives from yesteryear, which highlighted the anger and alarm now seeping through the establishment. I forgot to add this broadside from Peter Hitchens, brother of the noted hawk:
'The idea that naked force can create human freedom is Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1059843640479685812003-08-02T10:00:00.000-07:002003-08-02T10:00:40.283-07:00COMMENTS SUSPENDED FOR THE MOMENT ...
It seems the people at Squawkbox automatically terminate their (relatively reliable 'cept on most weekends) service after a while, after which one is required to pay for it. A new comments facility will be up within the next few days or so. Until then, I'm open to advice in the matter.
I've my nose buried deeply in an elegantly constructed text by DavidRobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1059800125311612432003-08-01T21:55:00.000-07:002003-08-01T21:55:25.290-07:00BOOKMARK ADVICE
I suggest you bookmark this definitive link on the whole Iraq outrage and take comfort in the knowledge you're but a click away from fact-checking the guts out of anything Washington, London or Canberra ever has claimed or likely ever will dare to claim in the matter.
Praise be to Steve Perry.Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1059529895864338142003-07-29T18:51:00.000-07:002003-07-29T18:52:41.390-07:00I DON'T KNOW
by Glenn Condell
When was the last time you heard a right-winger say that? They almost never do. It's nearly as rare as 'I was wrong'. Nobody likes to admit ignorance or error of course, but it's anathema to the wingers because of the centrality of certitude in the face they present to the world.
They had no doubt Saddam had WMD and no doubt that it constituted a clear and Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1059051012090647002003-07-24T05:50:00.000-07:002003-07-29T07:20:47.380-07:00OH, AND I DON'T AGREE WITH THE SOLOMONS THINGY EITHER ...
Three things occur to me on the vexing issue that is the Solomon Islands. Firstly, that the Anglo-Saxon West's response to the lesson of Somalia is to do it all again. Secondly, that social problems that look ethnic or criminal (or theocratic or tribal or ideological or demagogic) on the surface are typically economic problems at bottomRobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1058790077689529222003-07-21T05:21:00.000-07:002003-07-21T05:21:17.623-07:00TWICE THE BLOGORRHOEA!
Please be upsitting and let us join in convivially dismarrhoeaic greeting of blogorrhoea's newest scribe, Glenn Condell. Glenn will be known to many of you as an articulate lurker of comments boxes around the world and across the spectrum. Another young man trapped in a middle-aged body who, driven by the times and permitted by the technology, has decided to say 'I'm madRobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1058789880139954492003-07-21T05:18:00.000-07:002003-07-21T05:18:00.093-07:00UPSIDE DOWN
by Glenn Condell
You know your world has 'changed, changed utterly' when you find yourself nodding in agreement with Norman Tebbitt, Malcolm Rifkind, Max Hastings and our own Big Mal.
These people were pretty much the ne plus ultra of political enemies not so very long ago. They were the right-wingers of their time (an often ugly era now starting to look like the good old days) Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1058789750722835452003-07-21T05:15:00.000-07:002003-07-21T05:15:50.683-07:00UPSIDE DOWN
by Glenn Condell
You know your world has 'changed, changed utterly' when you find yourself nodding in agreement with Norman Tebbitt, Malcolm Rifkind, Max Hastings and our own Big Mal.
These people were pretty much the ne plus ultra of political enemies not so very long ago. They were the right-wingers of their time (an often ugly era now starting to look like the good old days) Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1058698196591120682003-07-20T03:49:00.000-07:002003-07-20T03:52:50.530-07:00BLOG-SURFING UNTO TRUTH?
Shadow of the Hegemon's Demosthenes notes that the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption and abuse, Judicial Watch, has cited documents turned over by the Commerce Department as a result of Judicial Watch's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit concerning the activities of the Cheney Energy Task Force. They contain a map of Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1058629087811726782003-07-19T08:38:00.000-07:002003-07-19T08:38:07.790-07:00THOUGHTS AT BED-TIME
* Serious unravelling proceeds apace in Washington, where Congressman Henry Waxman has just posted this open letter to the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Mr Waxman tears strips of that awful State of the Union spray, accuses administration heavies of telling diabolical porkies, and suspects Chief Spook Tenet took rather more heat than was his due (if not quite Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1058603820447407252003-07-19T01:37:00.000-07:002003-07-19T01:37:00.420-07:00NOURISHING LONG FAMISHED PARTS: THE FALCONIC PEREGRINATION
I've been away from the confuser for a few days, and only once did I miss the square-eyed tyrant. It was on Monday afternoon, in the middle of the Warrumbungle Range, atop Split Rock and amidst a reverie I might have tried to force into words had I not been interrupted by the splendid sight of a young male koala patiently and Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1058542817086404352003-07-18T08:40:00.000-07:002003-07-18T08:40:16.970-07:00WTF?
Sprach The Leader Of The Free World, "We gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in."
Was he speaking without notes or do his minders really think The Most Lied To Electorate In The World is sufficiently befuddled to swallow this? Bloody scary either way, really.
And then there's Blair. Even if it does turn out that every word of the rhetoric he, Bushbaby Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1057758095619051672003-07-09T06:41:00.000-07:002003-07-09T06:41:35.486-07:00I shall be even quieter than usual for a few days. Do suggest those of social scientific bent might get a blast out of Crooked Timber. Oh, and I've finally added the invaluable Arts & Letters Daily, too. Methinks the bloglist is growing uncommon long. Will learn how to list 'em in headed categories soon, promise.
BTW, a nice quote from Edmund Burke (ah, if only tories these days had half Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1057754357604393872003-07-09T05:39:00.000-07:002003-07-09T05:39:17.483-07:00IS WASHINGTON FIXING TO GIVE IRAN ANOTHER SHAH?
I've been leafing through some *Asia Times* archives to try to make sense of what's going on in Iran and what the US (and, perhaps, Australia) is doing about it.
We may expect Iran to be back in the headlines after tomorrow has had its way with the place. That's when the fourth anniversary of a singularly bloody protest falls, and by all Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1057500921132221342003-07-06T07:15:00.000-07:002003-07-06T07:15:21.100-07:00A FALCONIC PEREGRINATION
Am contemplating taking the clan for a few days' motoring through the backblocks. Up through Parkes, Dubbo, Lightning Ridge, and back to the wintry (read 'ear-numbing, nose-tingling, scrotum-shrivelling, nipple-hardening') Southern Highlands via Coonabarabran. Thought I might herd the loinfruit 'round the Parkes Observatory, bike 'em 'round the Western Plains Zoo, get Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1057488247982913042003-07-06T03:44:00.000-07:002003-07-06T03:44:07.843-07:00ECONORRHOEA: World Recovery or PR-led Sucker's Rally?
Truth be told, I dunno, but …
I'm listening to all this talk of economic recovery with widening eyes. Nay, rolling eyes. Haven't we been hearing this 'it'll turn around the quarter after next' talk for, like, thirteen quarters now? And don't these optimists always forget to tell us WHY there'll be a turnaround?
Sure, the US has copped Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1057192593881502262003-07-02T17:36:00.000-07:002003-07-02T17:36:33.793-07:00THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF KATE
I'm so sick my hair hurts, but Kate Hepburn's passing has planted the seed of yet another sweeping speculative self-indulgence, which is just the sort of half-arsed thing we do here at blogorrhoea, so here goes.
Now, I like Kate Hepburn films as much as the next chronically miserable old git, but I do have to admit I tire just a skerrick of all this talk about her Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1057192267074572262003-07-02T17:31:00.000-07:002003-07-02T17:31:07.010-07:00THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF KATE ... continued
So the Golden Age of Hollywood was born because masculinity took a transforming socio-economic hit in the 1930s. If you reckon this sounds like plain ol' vulgar Marxian cultural materialism, you'd be right. And I reckon this relations-of-production-conditions-culture line does just as good a job of explaining the forties. The Golden Age actually Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619151.post-1057155840706898532003-07-02T07:24:00.000-07:002003-07-02T07:24:00.646-07:00Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06281594213918160026noreply@blogger.com