Wednesday 23 May 2007

My finger on the pulse, or my hand on my.....

It seems I have either had some rather prestigous visitors to my blog in recent days (unlikely, given the visit counter) or I have managed to articulate what Labor have been thinking over the past week. I quote gratuitously from the SMH:


Labor has accused Prime Minister John Howard of behaving bizarrely in his attempts to turn around opinion polls.Opposition MPs say Mr Howard's warning to colleagues of being annihilated is the latest in a series of attempts win back favour with voters."Last week the Prime Minister said it was all a joke, this week he says he's going to be annihilated," treasury spokesman Wayne Swan told reporters in Canberra today."The only thing that's going to be annihilated around here is taxpayers' money."Mr Swan said the Prime Minister was indulging in blatant political advertising campaigns to improve his short-term prospects instead of the long-term national interest."I think that's pretty evident from his bizarre behaviour in recent days."We started off with the smear campaign back in February, then we had the fear campaign, now of course we've got the ad campaign."Mr Swan said Mr Howard's short-term approach was why opinion polls had turned against the Government.Victorian MP Kelvin Thomson said Mr Howard was just trying to claim the underdog status in voters' eyes."I think that's a piece of political trickiness for which the Prime Minister is notorious," Mr Thomson told reporters.

All royalties or job offers to tripepolitik@gmail.com please... or...at the very least, leave a comment on my page Wayne. :-P

Tuesday 22 May 2007

Nice Joke

Howard's Choice - I just stumbled across this joke and thought I really should link to it.

Annihilating them in the aisles.

Those kidders, the Australian electorate are poised to ANNIHILATE the government in the upcoming election, according to John Howard at the party meeting cum news conference held today.
In the carefully staged media event, Howard addressed his party members with a choreographed performance, painting a grim picture to capitalise on his "Underdog" angle to the media yesterday. You don't use words like ANNIHILATION in relation to your electoral chances, unless you are trying to draw yourself up as some kind of backs against the wall hero. You don't invite every news organisation in the country either, unless you want to give the impression that it is you who is the underdog in this fight.
But perhaps more revealing was his solution to his lagging support... run a campaign against Labor's economic credentials. He has no "Rabbit" to pull out of his hat, he says... the answer lies in undermining the oppositions economic ability.
To me it seems a particularly foolhardy way of winning back the dissillusioned electorate.... trying to emphasise just how much more dissillusioned they'd be under your opposition. This has been the Liberal tactic for the past 10 years, but as mentioned previously in my posts it is starting to wear thin, especially when Team Gillard-Rudd weren't even in Parliament 10 years ago.
The Australian Electorate simply would not fall for such a transparent, flaky strategy like that......again......surely?

Labels: , ,

Monday 21 May 2007

Everyone loves an underdog....?

It seems today, less than a week after Howard suggested his, and his party's poor showing in the polls was down to the great Aussie sense of humour, his spin doctors have decided that perhaps belittling a disenchanted public's opinion of him might not perhaps be the best way to win them back. So today, in all of his humble, self effacing glory he changed his tune stating:

"We are behind at the present time and I have been warning for a long time that it would be very hard for the Government to win this election.
"And it's quite clear that the public after 11 years of this Government is contemplating a change. I wouldn't want the Australian people to think I was not understanding that.
"But there is a long way to go and I do believe that as we get closer to the election there will be a greater focus on the consequences of change."

So, for a long time he has been claiming they had a tough fight and were coming in as the underdog on this coming election apparently...even if he was laughing it off as that dry wit of the Australian public just a week ago... It is still interesting to see that in conceding the Australian public want change, he is not prepared to say "I'll do better, I'll try harder", but simply, "Australian's will change their views, not me. They'll see the error of their ways...they'll come round". While trying to promote the fact he is in touch with the public feeling, he is essentially saying the public is wrong in their perception of him, not that he needs to address this perception.
The Public: "You are out of touch"
Johnny: "I hear what you're saying"
The Public: "What do you propose to do to remedy this?"
Johnny:"......you'll come round...er....Labor's got your purse strings! Booger Booger Booger!"

Will someone put the underdog down? He seems to have a incurably diseased perspective.

Labels:

Sunday 20 May 2007

What's the time Mr Wolfowitz?

It's setting an example to developing nations that nepotism is a corrupt practice time!!!!!!

Labels: , ,

Saturday 19 May 2007

Welcome back (supposed) Plotter

It's expected on Sunday David Hicks will return to Australia after over 5 years imprisonment in Guantanamo bay. He'll then serve 9 months prison in Adelaide before being released, a fully rehabilitated terrorist I assume.
The debate about David Hicks has long been exhausted. It took the might of American Intelligence 5 years to formulate a supposedly fair trial where that evil Genius David Hicks was charged with providing Material Support to Terrorists. Specifically, he staked out the American Embassy in Kabul, that had been abandoned for over 10 years. He was also accused of watching grass grow, and spying on paint drying...
But the "Free David Hicks" calls have now died down, the complicit support of imprisonment without charge, by this Howard government forgotten. Just as they would hope. But it hasn't been forgotten. You rarely can be steadfast and populist at the same time Mr Howard, and the perception that this government is a government that does not believe in liberty, until the notion of liberty becomes popular within the electorate, is a hard stain to shift.

Labels: , , ,

Wednesday 16 May 2007

The Rise and Falwell of Political Secularism

Jerry Falwell, Religious fundamentalist, bullwark of the christian right and influential political figure passed away this week. So influential that George W Bush posted this moving tribute to a perfect case study in religious extremism:

Laura and I are deeply saddened by the death of Jerry Falwell, a man who cherished faith, family, and freedom. As the founder of Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, Jerry lived a life of faith and called upon men and women of all backgrounds to believe in God and serve their communities. One of his lasting contributions was the establishment of Liberty University, where he taught young people to remain true to their convictions and rely upon God's word throughout each stage of their lives.
Today, our thoughts and prayers are with his wife Macel and the rest of the Falwell family.

A sincere, and heartfelt eulogy to a man who had this to say about the causes behind September 11th:

"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'"

That's right, the most powerful man in the world has paid tribute to a christian extremist who believes Will and Grace, and Germain Greer are to blame for islamic extremists crashing some planes into some towers.... Falwell would later go on to retract those statements with this qualification of his remark:

"I do believe, as a theologian, based upon many Scriptures and particularly Proverbs 14:23, which says 'living by God's principles promotes a nation to greatness, violating those principles brings a nation to shame,'" he said.
Falwell said he believes the ACLU and other organizations "which have attempted to secularize America, have removed our nation from its relationship with Christ on which it was founded."
"I therefore believe that that created an environment which possibly has caused God to lift the veil of protection which has allowed no one to attack America on our soil since 1812," he said.

This is a man who has moved George W Bush to tribute, and seemingly a man who George W Bush not only Admires, but identifies with....
Want to know why we're losing the war on Terrorism? Because you can't promote Islamic Moderatism, when you believe in Christian Extremism. Aggressive anti-arab foreign policy had nothing to do with it of course.... it was God lifting a veil of protection because of a society showing tolerance.
And Australia followed.

Labels: ,

How green was my policy?

Stern picked it up, Gore ran with it, and now everyone wants some of that green action. In the space of a year the concept of Global Warming has gone from being a vague notion of doom, akin to swimming too soon after eating, to something much more frightening. After all, this was going to cost the world money!!! GDP would plummet, the weather would tear strips from the neglectful, wretched, shortsighted human race, and worst of all the value of the beach house would be seriously depreciated when it slips beneath the waves. The village folk collectively shuddered....

So the world has got on with the business of working out how they are going to fix it. Wind Farms, Solar Energy, Geothermal power, Moon rocks, hydrogen, helium, lithium, berilium.... everything is a possibility, for the brave new children of the revolution.
Which is all well and good, unless polluting the earth with the contents of your sandpit is the backbone of your GDP.....

Australia, rather early on in the piece found that it had a natural talent for pulling rather valuable things out of the ground. And from this gift, the nation has risen in prominence, dutifully digging things out of the ground and growing rich for the exertion. Indeed coal alone contributes 15% to the merchandising exports of this sunburnt country. Due to rising demand for all things subterranean from our good friends in China and India, Australia has enjoyed an unprecedented boom period, a surge in wealth that has resulted in Wide Screen Plasma TV's becoming legal tender.... but now....what with Global Warming... nothing devalues the currency when you're using it as a life raft, after your holiday home has taken on a rather Atlantis-like quality. Global Warming is going to be catastrophic... we must find alternatives....

And so, I went hunting for the grand environmental plans of the Liberal Party and the Labor party in this election year. For the ALP I found as follows from this location: http://www.alp.org.au/policy/index.php

As you can see the thrust of the Global Warming solution for Labor is heavy investment in the development and proof of concept of Clean Coal... You can read about how the technology theoretically and in some places, practically works, yourself, but from my reading of it, it is a rather expensive and large scale unproven technology. The time frames put together are also rather a worry.... Labor aims to have The technology reducing CO2 emissions at power plants by 2020, and at close to zero emissions by 2030.

The Liberal Party's environmental "policy" or as near as I can make of it, can be found here:
http://www.pm.gov.au/government/sustainable_environment.cfm

There does not appear to be any clear policy on the money set aside for Solar energy development in the Budget, but perhaps Mr Costello hasn't got around to advising his staff to update their webpages yet.

They vaguely mention a bit of funding to make clean coal viable, but the jewel in the crown of their policy is their Nuclear Platform. We're sitting on piles of radioactive rocks so lets use them... and even better lets sell them to other countries as!
This idea perhaps has some merit, but I believe you need to read a little further down the page to see how seriously little Johnny takes this debate:
Australia contributes only 1.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, which when compared to China’s greenhouse gas emissions, are an extremely small percentage globally. If Australia was to close down all of its power stations tonight, the savings in greenhouse gas emissions would be replaced by the growth in China's energy sector emissions in less than 12 months
Australia is home to roughly 20 million of the world's roughly 6.5 billion population. Let's do the maths shall we? 20000000 / 6500000000 = .3%
It appears to me that whilst Johnny is trying to emphasize the trifle that is our carbon emissions, we're actually contributing 5 times our "share". By emphasizing our "relatively low" carbon emissions, it appears he is trying to trivialise any contribution we make to reducing them.

This highlights the massively schizophrenic positions of both the Liberals and Labor on the issue of the Environment. The truth behind the matter is, for the short term at least, Australia is profitting off the polluting habits of the rest of the world. Whilst Labor talks about cleaning up coal to reduce it's emissions, there can be no safeguards on how the coal is burnt to whomever we export it to. The Liberals aren't even interested in cleaning coal up in any serious way. They maintain their policy of poking trivially around the edges of opportunities to make things better, with no real conviction.

The liberal party have always seen the environment as secondary to industry. From their trivialisation of the issue and buck passing, they still do. Their policy of "everyone else is doing it, and we'd be disadvantaging australia if we don't do it too", reaks of short term gain. 18 points behind in the polls, they are motivated by retention of power and are keen to belittle the environmental threat, while emphasising their commitment to Industry... One wonders whether little Johnny will still be speaking of "Knee Jerk" reactions when Kirribilli is swallowed up by the harbour. One thinks he will.

The Labor party, mindful of the perception that they are poor managers of the economy and unemployment rates (even if the liberals supposed economic "credibility" is heavily derived from the economic policies of Keating), have committed to an option which they hope will demonstrate their commitment to the economy as well as the environment, but which may very well not quite demonstrate either.

So where does that leave us? With all our eggs in one basket, or all our eggs in the other. Only time will tell, which basket, if either, is the right one.

Labels: , , , , , ,