Our ABC is screening the first two episodes of the BBC 4 adaptation of The Alan Clark Diaries tonight at 8.30 pm. It stars John Hurt as the eponymous Tory minister. For some reason I’d rather not fathom, it’s going to air without a review in The Age Green Guide.
Obviously I shouldn’t recommend it sight unseen, but what the hell - it ought to be worth taping, at least. If it turns out to be crap you can always tape over it.
Update: me and Zeppo taped it while we watched something light on another channel. Now I daren’t read the comments to my own post in case there are spoilers in there. Brilliant!
Unlike Andrew Bartlett, I haven’t exactly been open about having depression over the past few years, except to friends, family and my personal brain-care specialist. On the other hand, I have thrown out enough hints here and there, so I might as well step all the way out of the closet and admit that I have a yappy little black terrier of my very own. I share Senator Bartlett’s interest in the way depression is perceived, portrayed and dealt with - and this page on the Hillsong web-site - written by American evangelical crap-artist Marilyn Hickey - makes me bloody angry.
According to Hickey who has been “Covering the Earth with the Word” (Isaiah 11:9) for over 30 years as an anointed Bible teacher:
… depression is a supernatural spirit of destruction straight from the devil, and as such, needs to be treated like an enemy.
Continue reading ‘My Name Ain’t Legion (Mark 5:9). Got That?’
Ok, to help Hugh Morgan and Andrew Robb out, I’m running a contest for the top five Australian or unAustralian values! I haven’t thought of a prize yet, but it’ll be a book, as in my previous contests. Submit your entries - you have a week!
Ps - as demonstrated below the fold, Emus, Kangaroos, Black Swans and Magpies exhibit UNAUSTRALIAN BEHAVIOURS!!!
Continue reading ‘What’s Australian or unAustralian? Contest!!!’
An open thread where you can, at your weekend leisure, discuss whatever you like.
Seeing as there is a lot going on in the history wars right now, I’ve found myself on various threads being sidetracked to the subject war of Vietnam, which also appears to be the subject of revisionism as well, so time for the subject to be elevated to a post, especially also given recent Anzac celebrations, and our troops in Vietnam at the time suffering some 500 deaths.
There were two belligerent parties that sought an agreement at the Geneva Conference in 1954, after the loss by the French of the battle of Dien Ben Phu. Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh and the French were the prime parties. France had by international law as occupiers the authority to negotiate and realised then its colonial ambitions in Vietnam were in complete ruins. An honourable way out was sought by the aged old method of peace agreements. A little known person called Diem, later leader of South Vietnam, was not involved with the battle of Dien Ben Phu and was not a legitimate party to the Geneva Accords, obviously never signed it, as he had no standing. Bao Dai, on the other hand was there in his capacity as the puppet creation of France of “The State of Vietnam” He didn’t sign the Accord either, being (as a puppet) essentially represented by France, despite the fact he was given status at the Conference. The French and the North were making peace; the puppets and the latent usurper Diem were not, but the latter was planning doubtlessly to get rid of Bao Dai at the earliest opportunity with a very cunning plan.
Continue reading ‘Vietnam: Revisionist Wars Revisited.’
Crossposted from The Fourth World War.
The New Global Order Rises - Why Iran Can Afford To Defy The US
Iran has announced it will defy any further calls by the UN to stop its program of enriching uranium for civilian, peaceful purposes. At the same time, the US has declared the UN Security Council must act now in order to save its credibility.
But China and Russia have warned the US not to do anything stupid, or dangerous, when it comes to Iran. And Iran has told the US it will strike back “beyond belief” if there is an invasion or round of airstrikes, or even a solid slab of sanctions.
The US has crowed too loud this time.
Continue reading ‘Guest post by Darryl Mason III’
Hugh Morgan, former CEO of Western Mining Corporation, has caused a bit of a kerfuffle locally, with his comments on dual nationality, reported in The Age, yesterday:
Business leader Hugh Morgan has called for dual citizenship to be outlawed, comparing it to having a mental illness. In a speech at Deakin University last night, the prominent Liberal Party supporter and former Business Council chairman said a person with dual citizenship had “at least the beginning of a bipolar disorder”.
Mr Morgan said citizenship was one of the most important elements of personal identity and would have a bearing on Australia’s survival as a nation.
“I am convinced that if we took Australian citizenship seriously, we would not tolerate this bipolarity. If you are an Australian then that should be the end of the matter,” he said.
Mr Morgan also weighed into the “culture wars”, backing John Howard’s criticism of the “dumbing down” of English teaching in Australian schools due to postmodernism and political correctness. He said post-modernism — which he defined as the belief that all versions of the truth were equally valid — threatened to cut the link between generations of Australians.’
Continue reading ‘Qu(ot)e?’
The BBC is reporting that scientists have discovered a hitherto unknown animal, which is so different from anything else it’s been given its own family and genus.
Marine biologists have discovered a crustacean in the South Pacific that resembles a lobster or crab covered in what looks like silky fur.
Kiwa hirsuta is so distinct from other species that scientists have created a new taxonomic family for it.
As a follow up to my previous post on the worsening position of women in Iraq, I wanted to draw attention to two more recent reports. First, The Washington Times.
“Life has changed for the worse,” said Bushra Mahmoud, 40, a mother of three who was sitting in the waiting area. “There is a creeping zealousness among men and women that is really frightening. You sit on the bus and have abuse heaped on you by the fanatics because you are not wearing the hijab [Islamic head covering]. These things never used to happen.”
Intimidation of women for religious reasons has become more common in the past year, and those who do not cover themselves are often the targets of kidnappers.
Al Jazeera reports on research by human rights NGOs.
20 years ago yesterday a supposedly routine exercise in the Ukraine’s Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant went horribly wrong, producing a cloud of radioactive elements which travelled across much of Western Europe and even to the USA. Rather than dealing with hypotheticals like ‘could it happen again’, I’ll deal with the events in reference to energy policy, health and science policy, radiation protection science and the more direct human costs, over the fold.
Continue reading ‘20 years after Chernobyl’
The Howard government: file under “getting the simple, easy, basic, decent, straightforward things right“.
I think The Australian is running a campaign. Quick on the heels of Stephen Barton’s Kokoda Track minimalism, now we have another hitherto unknown author, Bob Wurth, attacking John Curtin as an appeaser. It would be worth reading his book to see if the documents he cites can bear the interpretation he places on them, but it’s also pretty clear that what Curtin was trying to do was to prevent Japan from entering the war. Certainly, senior Cabinet secretaries within FDR’s administration, in the lead up to Pearl Harbour, were still exploring the possibility of dialogue with Japanese factions who opposed or who were lukewarm to the prospect of entering the war. It’s pretty rich, as Wurth does, to make Curtin bear the responsibility for Menzies’ acts while the latter was still PM, and it’s worth noting this bit from the article:
Curtin girded the government to prepare for the possibility of war with Japan at a time when Australia’s attention was firmly fixed on helping Britain. On February 14, 1941, the advisory war council heard reports that raised the spectre of Australia being abandoned by the great powers and being forced to fight a holding war with Japan.
The British believed that the capacity of the Japanese “should not be over-stated”. But Curtin demanded that Australia be put on a war footing.
As John Quiggin observes, it’s difficult not to be suspicious that when the name of Alexander Downer crops up again and again in such revisionist articles, that what’s going on is partisan re-writing of history to serve present party advantage rather than a disinterested search for truth.
On what was intermittently a good tempered and interesting thread about nationalism and identity in the context of Anzac day, I posted this comment just at the point that it was swamped by the usual tedious leftie bashing from our good friends the RWDBs:
I also have an odd relationship with nationalism, because of my family heritage and where I’ve lived. My dad was an American diplomat, and I lived all over the shop as a girl. My mum was Portuguese, and when my parents separated, moved to Australia as she had rellos here. I went to high school and uni (u/g) in Brisbane, then took advantage of my American citizenship and went to California to do postgrad stuff, and stayed on for quite a bit, til I came back here a couple of years ago. I’ve also lived in Europe. So I don’t feel myself to be particularly exclusive in who I am. I’m very fond of both Australia and America, and feel like I’m a bit of both. I speak with a Californian accent. I don’t feel particularly patriotic as such, but there are freedoms and values in America I’ll defend strongly, just as there are aspects of Australian-ness I think are wonderful.
I may be reading too much into it, but what interested me about the lack of response was that just as I find it difficult to pigeon hole my nationality (and am accordingly ambiguous about nationalism and patriotism), so too it’s hard to write the stories of those who come from more than one place into these heavily politicised discourses about “how to be (un)Australian”. There’s no doubt that we live in an increasingly cosmopolitan world. One of the paradoxes of globalisation is backlashes against the free movement of labour and the erection of literal and metaphorical border fences. This, of course, is quite contrary to the promise of globality.
Continue reading ‘On being (un)Australian or global(ised)’
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