Compare and contrast, as they say, Kevin Rudd in PNG building bridges and restoring relationships and John Howard in Washington ranting about “Islamic fascism” and dwelling on the past.
It’s the exact same dynamic as in the election - Rudd accentuating the positive and looking to the future, and Howard mired in negativity and defending his “achievements”. Still, I thought it was neat that both were overseas at the same time - it really does shine an interesting light on their differences.
The nowhere man in bushington could we please revoke his passport freeze his pension, and turn him into the airport terminal man or worse still send him on an endless cruise with ironbark turkey
Don,t worry as long as Bolt and his merry band of admirers exist there will be always a corner of the Sun Herald that will be forever Howard
Until the election, the US is the only place that Howard could get a sympathetic ear. It’s appropriate that he comes out of his shell there.
Now John, please, please dump on Costello…
The past is Ratty’s future.
By the way, there was a very interesting deal done on the PNG trip that deserves a post of its own.
One might think that whatever their public position, the government read Garnaut’s interim report very, very closely.
Howard is reminding the nation why they voted him out (his defence of WorkChoices especially) and fundamentally undermining the opposition. There is a real opportunity for the Government here: demand that the opposition renounce Howard or be labelled as neo-Howardites, ready to re-implement Howardism at the first opportunity.
Will Tony Abbott be able to resist the opportunity to affirm his visceral Howardism? Unlikely. Will Malcolm Turnbull be able to resist the opportunity to further undermine Nelson by driving hos own non-Howard agenda? Even more unlikely.
Could not agree more Bilko (at #1), but please can we stick with “Ironbar” Tuckey, his original moniker, rather than “Ironbark”, which might suggest another moral giant and “man of steel”.
The story goes (and I am open to correction by others on the finer details) that Wilson, a former pub owner in the wild west, ejected a few uppity darkies by bashing them up with an old iron bar that came to hand.
And this ridiculous squawking turkey is apparently regaling sea cruisers with his funny stories about the australian way of life. Shudder.
Great comment from Tim at Surfdom above a picture of a beaming ratty holding his salad bowl:
“here’s a picture of a shallow empty vessel and a nice piece of glassware…”
Howard will go to his grave loudly declaring that everything he ever did was right and best, whatever the evidence against him. His speech moved from one issue (WorkChoices) to another (Iraq) to another (climate change) where damned obstinacy proved his undoing.
The fact that he remains so obstinately blinkered to reality, even in defeat, tells you everything about the man.
The spiritual home of the US neo-conservatives, whose entire ideology is founded on the concept that you can “invent your own realities”, was the perfect place for Howard to deliver such a speech. He should have worked himself into an apoplexy of righteous indignation, had a heart attack, and died in a state of pure rapture right there upon the podium. The crowd would have loved it.
Whats the bet his old mate George didn’t bother to catch up this time.
Did anyone else notice that his bestest buddy couldn’t be bothered going to listen to him?
First sign of intelligence Bush has shown.
Have gone to the trouble of wading through the transcript of the Wollstonecraft Hermit’s (or should I say Wollstonecraft Traitor)speech to the American Institute. The first thing that stands out is his eager acceptance of the idea that the left is in some way undemocratic.Would like to remind him that democratic Socialism has been around since the 19th century and has done more to preserve democratic freedom than any other group of political parties. In hisextraordinary rewrite of history he completely forgets it was the right that got into bed with Fascism in the 1930s (including his beloved Menzies) while socialists were dying, yes, dying for democracy in Spain.(I realise the situation was more complex than that, but that will have to do.)
He comes clean in America on how he really feels about climate change. “a new battleground. The same intellectual bullying and moralising used in other debates..” etc, etc. So now we know he was lying to us about doing something about global watming during the election. Surprise, surprise.
And he’s still complaining about teh left in educational institutions and the media. Looks like we won that one, comrades!Of course there was the obigatory and utterly pointless attack upon feminism, the expected lauding of free market forces and praising of the Bush version of spreading democracy (which from my reading of American Revolutionary history would have US’s Founding Fathers turning in their graves). Not a word about how he sold out our cultural policies and put the PBS under threat with the US/Aus Free Trade Agreement.We all know what he said about Workchoices - it was all over TV and of course Madam Mesmer agrees. More trouble ahead for Dr. Frankenstein who’s still trying to resurrect a dead Liberal Party?
There was the usual guff about Al-Qaeda in Iraq, without acknowledging they wouldn’t have been there if Bush hadsn’t turned a family quarrel into a Middle Eastern war in Iraq, when he should have been going after Ben Laden in Sfghanistan/Pakiston. What was it Bush said? “He can run but he can’t hide.’ Oh, yeah?
And an extraordinary admission that “faith-based groups [had] direct involvement in policy making and execution.” Probably the only thing Rudd and he might agree upon. Howard still doesn’t get the privatisation of the CES was an abject failure.
I’ll comment separately on Rudd in PNG.
Kevin Rudd goes to PNG and behaves, as expected, with decency, compassion, honesty and ready to give PNG landholders on Kokoda a fair hearing, despite his passion for listing the Kokoda Track on the World Heritage sites.. And does something about global warming into the bargain. As a far leftie I’ll readily admit Rudd’s potential conservatism gives me the willies, but I keep on forgiving him becuse he keeps on making me proud to be an Aussie.What a difference to Howard and his neo-colonialism.
Mark says:
I know! Howard was such a tosser! take this for example;
http://www.theage.com.au/news/Asia-tsunami/PM-pledges-1bn-in-aid/2005/01/06/1104832185285.html
God, what a clown that man was!
I’m with Bilko - everyone would be happier if Howard just stayed in Washington. After all, William Kristol will need a fluffer after the republicans lose the presidential elections and the legitimacy of the whole neo-con policy industry gets a kick in the nuts.
Although, for a very brief period, it felt like mid-2006 again with the little coconut ranting on the television. Gave me a case of the heebie jeebies.
Like Paul Burns says, the difference between Rudd and Howard is very stark. So much for the “Howard with hair” fallacy that the right have been mollifying themselves with.
While I am generally surprised (and rather happy) at how little attention this long-overdue outburst has generated, I do note that Julia Gillard has thrown down the gauntlet to a conspicuously silent Liberal front bench.
Here’s a great opportunity for Dr 0.07% to differentiate himself from his former boss, if he cares to do so. Don’t hold your breath.
Personally, I hope they do in time. The public will have to become familiar with the alternative first though.
btw, Mark, thanks for the post. Utterly agree with you, David.Whatever my reservations it looks like Rudd might be up there with the other Labor Greats - Curtin, Chifley, Whitlam and Keating. And I have my reservations about all of them too, but that doesn’t stop me from recognising their humanity, courage and compassion, all of which Rudd has in spades, compared to that simpering, crawling little wimp from Wollestonecraft. Maybe he’ll (Howard) become an afficial US citizen, so he can continue to do what he did while in office. Put US interests ahead of Australian interests. Oh, I’ll shut up, I’m just getting angry.
Full transcript of the speech directly off the AEI site is here. I could only find an edited version in the stories about it.
I think it sums up Howard that he seems to be happier speaking in front of a right wing American conservative audience than he would be talking to most meaningful audiences in Australia.
Yes, you’d have to tie a chop round his neck to get a dog to play with him back home.
Meanwhile, who was it that pointed out that interests rates were higher than Nelson’s approval? Historic!
Im starting to prefer ‘the nightwatchman’ to the ‘locum’; as good as the latter is.
In fading light, Nelson’s function would seem to be protecting the real strikers in the middle order.
Swio, if he gave the same speech anywhere in Australia the response would be rather different. Even a 100% Liberal audience would be sucking in their breath, muttering darkly and muting the applause.
As for catching up with Dubya, it’s ironic that Rudd will be the one having that dubious pleasure in the near future.
gandhi,
Apparently Bishop has come out in support of Howard on Workchoices according to the Ch. 9 Today Program. Though except on rare occasions, like the reporting on the execution of that young Vietnamese drug dealer, they are hardly the epitome of journalistic excellence.
Names for Nelson. Like Dr. Frankenstein. Except Frankenstein brought a monster with some human feeling to life. Hardly an apt description of the Liberal Party.
Interesting article in SMH in light of ratty’s defence of Workchoices, which shows that taxpayer funded research into the effect of taxpayer funded advertising campaign comprehensively failed to convince the electorate that Workchoices was the best thing since the invasion of Iraq.
In fact the research, conducted on a weekly basis showed that the advertising campaign merely intensified the hostility to the greatest economic reform ever.
Howard, believing his own propaganda resolutely refused to change anything until it was too late. The story emphasises again that conservative cheer squad need to accept their share of the blame for the demise of the Liberals, so adept were they at shielding dear leader from reality, and helping to convince him that his powers of bullshit were the work of a political genius.
Stay over there you little creep. When the tide turns in the US as well, maybe you’ll find a willing audience in Burma.
Howard still doesn’t understand that every time he bitches about the new government, he’s putting down all the voters who chose Rudd and co over his. When in the speech he started carping about changes to the massively unpopular WorkChoices, it only emphasised how he just doesn’t get it. At all.
Paul, I’m with you - I have reservations about Rudd too, but the alternative was truly intolerable. Comparing Rudd and Howard now, I must admit my first feeling is one of relief.
More rodentine lies from Howard’s Washington snivel:
When faced with electoral annihilation and a backbench revolt over WC, isn’t this precisely what Howard did?
Shorter Ratty: these values are too important to allow just anyone to exercise them. That’s why we passed the Sedition Act.
“Help! I’m Janet Albrechtsen trapped in the body of a short, bald man!”
Re: “Help! I’m Janet Albrechtsen trapped in the body of a short, bald man!�
Ha ha ha! Nice one.
The Rodent and assorted IR apologists never squarely faced the ugly reality: as a putative piece of ‘economic reform’, Workchoices was absolute garbage.
Just a raft of ugly anti-union nastiness, a monumental, clotheared and dunderheaded red tape ridden schmozzle.
It was the work of a gang of nasty and clueless ideologues, who appeared to know absolutely FA about workplace productivity.
I say this, again, as its not clear to me that the commentariat have really got it: you CAN sell tough econoic reform to AU people.
What you CANT sell is an ideological dogs breakfast; the wishlist of clueless, politically ugly union bashers.
These guys got shown up as economic reform amateurs, and just plain ugly, nasty bastards.
One of the scariest lines was his admittance that “faith based groups” got privileged access to his government. Whatever happened to our secular society?
Whan Peter Garrett was pilloried during the campaign for letting slip that “it will all be different”, I thought at the time it was a Machiavellian dog-whistle (if one can have such a thing) to the left to say “don’t worry guys”. Maybe that will the case.
Howard’s speech also showed he couldn’t give a rodent’s about the Libs. It’s all about his glory, his self-aggrandisement and stuff what damage it might do to his Party. He’s sickening.
sorry 7, it should have been ironbar but the turkey seems fair
thankyou SW10
“Full transcript of the speech directly off the AEI site is here. I could only find an edited version in the stories about it.”
I have placed in my howard haters folder to read when I have consumed enough scotch to justify being sick
Au contraire Paul (#17). If JWH were to take up US citizenship that would be a tremendous gain for Australia. In that case he would be putting Australia’s interests ahead of the US’…and wouldn’t we all be grateful
fine.
Howard’s speech also showed he couldn’t give a rodent’s about the Libs.
Apparently he was very firmly knocked back when he asked about the Liberal President’s job after the election. At which stage, his ungrateful old apparatchiks became part of the problem.
One day some clever young Aussie journalist will have a full series in the MSM exposing how US neoconservatives undermined Australian democracy by getting their slimy tentacles through the doors and windows of countless government departments, most particularly DFAT and Defense. It will be revealed, for example, the supposedly independent wingnut crazies like Arthur Chrenkoff were actually aided and abetted by Howard’s Liberals (Chrenkoff worked for Senator Brett Mason). Then me might understand how a blinkered pro-US ideologue like Janet Albrechtsen, who counts such neocon crazies among her personal friends, ever got on the board of “your” ABC.
Paul Burns says:
Wow.
Though not everyone would agree with you on that. For example, here is the great Arthur Marwick speaking of the tremendous social and political transformations of the late ’50s, 1960s and ’70s:
- The Sixties, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1998. p 13
I’ve read that huge book cover to cover at least twice and nowhere in it did Professor Marwick suggest this was some prerogative of socialists, whom he generally mocks somewhat gently for their naive conceits.
… and why Howard took us to war in Iraq, despite massive public opposition to the war.
… and whether it was really just a coincidence that Howard was in the USA meeting Murdoch and Bush the day before 9/11.
Gandhi, it sounds like a great documentary to be made one day.
John Who heards crying in Washington reminds me of the line up of Aust right wing pollies and helpers doing similar during Keating Hawke and Whitlam governments. Never mind the damage!
Ugh, a bucket for Monsieur?
Australia’s 1000 troops in Afghanistan makes it the biggest non-NATO contributor to the military campaign in the country, and the 10th-biggest contributor overall.
“We are just so frustrated that so many other NATO countries are not making a contribution,” Mr Fitzgibbon told The Australian last night.
Translation, let’s get countries like Germany and France to overturn restrictions on the use of their troops so we can do a proper job of really pulverising the country (even further) back to the Stone Age.
Meanwhile, on the home-front Right-wing Social Democracy shows its true face by kicking the the most powerless when they are down…
CARERS are outraged at plans to dump a $1600 Government bonus saying they’re already living below the poverty line, while the Federal Opposition says they are being used as “human shields against inflation”.
Chav, I’d be very surprised if the axing of the carer’s allowance is carried out, or not replaced with something better. If not it is simply outragous.
There you go, the Rodent, a meretricious pile of dog droppings, as ever. Seriously though, folks, is there any way even he can believe a word that falls from his maw?
I haven’t read the paper today, so I don’t know what Australia’s best foreign correspondent has had to say, if anything.
chav, it’s not like Rudd isn’t prone to axing things - take Friday parliament for example…
Chav
I am a full time carer. I felt dirty taking the carer bonus as it was offered as a bribe in 2004. The money has been used for better quality disability equipment that would otherwise have been supplied by the then government. I was not bribed to vote for the then government, but heard a lot of people did. I was surprised that they kept renewing the bribe every year and did not expect it to be a permanent arrangement. I would gladly accept more money, providing it was done because I deserved it. Some of us less well off people need to retain our dignity and pride somehow.
Gravel, I agree the money should be spent on quality equipment and facilities for the disabled.
Btw, are you an ALP member?
Anna Bligh is already indicating that Rudd will reconsider the carer’s benefit.
Back on topic, this is from Crikey today:
There is an enormous amount of doublespeak in Howard’s speech, a lot of which (e.g. talk of “values”) makes perfectly good sense if (and only if) you take it completely out of context.
gandhi
Oh. My. God.
Perhaps you should have taken that one up with Dr Helen Caldicott at the Truth Now Tour - Sydney Conference.
And what about thoe Jews ‘high fiving’ in New York after the planes hit.
Oh, wait. No, those were Arabs in Gaza and Kabul. The Jews were in the buildings at the time. Sorry.
“CARERS are outraged at plans to dump a $1600 Government bonus saying they’re already living below the poverty line, while the Federal Opposition says they are being used as “human shields against inflationâ€?.”
It would also help if people realised that the amount they are referring to is the Howard government’s one-off payments to carers. The payments have not been scrapped as they were never promised, provided for in legislation OR forward estimates.
Having said that, I hope the Rudd government increases payments to carers (whether that be in the form of increasing fortnightly payments or by way of annual lump sum amounts.
Carers deserve better than to have a few hundred bucks flung their way at the whim of a government only interested in the plaudits for doing so and largely as a pre-election bribe.
Sucking up to neocon Seps is what schmuckens does best. Oh, what an unctious little grub he is. How right we were to terminate his tenure. One noted in John Winston’s vainglorious lecternal tone a sense of flawed destiny, a niggling awareness that his beloved Project for a New Australian Century had been betrayed by a fickle majority of ungrateful Australians.
And where were his bestest buddies on his night of neocon nights, Imbo and Laura, Lynne and Dick? Guess they had more important things to do like watch television that evening. They brushed him; tossed him aside like a phlegm-full tissue to be glad-handled by lesser league Fausts in a Straussian sea of grasping wannabes.
Bush’s absence from Hasbeen Howard’s AEI gig should not surprise. It would have been diplomatically inappropriate (as Rice would have told the Village Idiot), particularly given PM Rudd and President Bush are scheduled for a formal meeting next month.
[“CARERS are outraged at plans to dump a $1600 Government bonus saying they’re already living below the poverty line, while the Federal Opposition says they are being used as “human shields against inflation�.�]
Note that the $1600 figure ius a load of bull.
In fact if the Opposition Organ had done it’s research, it would see that the figure is a combination of two totally seprate one off payments according to whsat kind of payment you get to start with.
It is $1000 if you recieve the Carer’s PENSION, while people recieving the Carer’s Allowance get only $600 , and that was only a one off payment each year.
This is what the Rudd Govt will replace it with.
http://www.qld.carers.org.au/news1.html
Oh and here is the legislation that is currently before the parliament in regards to the Utilities Allowance paid to ALL welfare recipients.
http://parlinfoweb.aph.gov.au/piweb/Repository/Legis/ems/Linked/15020803.pdf
Hmmn, do we need a carers thread, maybe? Now if we had diaries…
This is part of a newstory from the Herald Sun
By Ilya Gridneff in Port Moresby, PNG
March 07, 2008 04:08pm
Mr Rudd has been greeted warmly in PNG, cementing the improvement in relations with Port Moresby after ties became strained under John Howard.
But his welcome in the small regional centre of Goroka, population 22,000, was the most enthusiastic so far during his three-day visit.
Pastor Rassel Kemo Kemo, 21, from Goroka, said Mr Rudd’s visit was the best thing to happen to PNG for a long time.
“Look at him, he’s like us, he walks the street and greets the people like a brother,” he said.
Paul Nehje, 36, said Mr Rudd was the greatest world leader.
“No other prime minister or leader would do something like this for us.
“He is really affecting the grass roots level.”
As he left, Mr Rudd stood on the step of his vehicle, waved and said: “Thank you PNG”.
Yeah, Rodent never really got out of the ‘white man’s burden’ mindset. No doubt partly because his dad and grandad were rorting rhe soldier settlement schemes in the New Guinea colony, fronting it for big copra business.
There’s a long line of these grubs all the way from the Rum Corps, to today. Just a bunch of Arthur Daleys, with the occasional Arthur Philip every 3rd PM or so to give us some hope.
As usual, Howard’s public commentary and his specious little article in todays Australian is all about him and his legacy. Bugger the altruistic social consciousness-raising that certain former PMs go in for. Actually it seems to me that he is now trying to influence political events from afar by defending Liberal policies that Brendan 07, Turnbull and the Departure Lounge Lizards are in the process of hurriedly burying. But Ratty still doesn’t get it. He just has no power anymore and it’s all so damn bloody glorious!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Right on Megan.
The tragedy (or farce) of John Who is its impossible to maintain/ ressurect a legacy when no one gives a crap.
Keating was wiser - waited sev eral years before sticking his head up.
Face it John - that fact is you were a product of poor competition. A brand that could only survive in a protectionist environment, with shoddy import replacement alternatives like Beazer.
The AEI. A discredited politician speaking to a hall full of discredited ideologues.
That’s one low-life forum. Was wondering who’d still have him. It’s all so October 2001.
And let us not forget that the AEI taught Tom Switzer all he needed to know about the american “culture wars” during his three year stint there as a research fellow from 1998 to 2001.
Switzer was then parachuted in as Op/Editor of The Australian in 2001 until 2007 to prosecute the culture wars in this country, on behalf of the neo-con puppet government under John Howard.
And so the circle is closed with Howard now debriefing his ideological masters in another country. As gandhi said above (at #32) I am looking forward to the day when the full story will be told…
Eliot Ramsay,
Re socialists - I was referring specifically to the role of socialist and other left wing parties and groups in the fight against Fascism in the 1930s. My point was to refute Howard’s assertion that somehow the American/Australian right have only been the only group fighting for democracy, In fact, with the New Guard, Old Guard, White Guard, and even Howard’s own administration, not just in the anti-terror laws, but in the way he manipulated government power, the right has almost always been more intent on destroying democracy. Just look at the Right in the ALP in the Illawarra!
The American Enterprise Institute is a mobv of political right wing has beens, some of whom are corrupt, who have the dubious distinction of being wrong on everything since and including the Tet Offensive.
Sliott Ramsay,
I haven’t read Marwick’s book, but I understand it deals with the 60s in Britain. I think you’ll find, if you read some of the Australian stuff on the 60s, eg Donald Horne, that the socialist left in all its forms, including in the ALP,(in those days it was an avowedly Socialist Party - you had to sign a pledge in effect declaring yourself a socialist) played a considerable part in the anti-war movement, feminism, Aboriginal Land rights and environmental battles, just to mention some of the issues.Its one of the reasons the 60s/70s Cultural Revolution here gets up JWH’s nose so much. And apart from Whitlam’s educational, health and welfare reforms,except when ably aided by right wingers in the ALP, he and his kind haven’t really had a lot of success in permanently rolling the Revolution back, IMHO.Its achievements have beecome too engrained in our society. That was part of his complaint to the American Institute. And I suspect Rudd will undo a lot of the damage Howard has done in all areas.
Chav at 42
No, never been a member of any party, union or anything other than a person that cares about how our society functions. Oh an by the way this was my first ever comment on LP, although I have been reading it for 12 months.
As for loosing the $1000 bribe money, we both received a letter to say we are both now eligible for the $500 utility allowance that the Labor government has introduced, which I will accept with dignity.
John who? Oh, that crafty old fascist who tried to set up a police state where the rich could only get richer and the workers got shafted . . . I remember now. He will go down in history as the man responsible for leading a government that perpertrated denial and inaction for 10 years about the biggest issue on the planet - climate change.
Kevin on the other hand is at least walking the talk overseas, like Malcome was. Great to see some PNG rainforests protected as carbon sinks.
But why doesn’t Labor take the same action here - with around 12-1700 tonnes of carbon emitted per hectare direcly resulting from logging of old growth and other native forests in Tasmania, Victoria and SE NSW?
In Victoria we are even silly enough to log our water catchments despite ongoing low rainfall - and build a $3b desalination plant that will
Presumably he will realise that urgent action is required on this in our backyard soon . . .
Paul Burns says;
Left wing parties in the fight against Fascism in the 1930s? Puh-lease!
The UK Labour Party as lates as 1935 actually called for the unilateral disarmament of the West. The actual abolition of England’s army and air force.
If you look at page 14 of 38 of this extract (originally page 263 0f Brookshire: Labour and British National Security), you’ll see that as late as 1936 it was still UK Labour policy to abolish the Royal Air Force, and as late as 1937 they were still heroically abstaining from voting during air force estimates divisions in Parliament.
http://ehq.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/29/2/251.pdf
This was while Hitler was already in power and rearming Germany for four years! That was a great move which I am sure filled Nazi and Fascist hearts with trepidation and alarm. Not.
By regularly denouncing England and its leading Conservative spokespersons, for example, as “war mongering”, the Left-dominated “peace” movement of the 1930s handed the dictators of Germany and Italy easy propaganda victories, one after the other.
Germany and Soviet Russia constantly portrayed themselves as the “victims” of “unfair” Western demands. And portrayed the West as predatory “imperialists”.
And ever eager to to get the boot into a liberal democracy, Marxists in particular felt they had “no choice” back then even to be eager lickspittles when it came to echoing such sentiments.
When Germany began to re-arm, in defiance of the League of Nations and in contravention of its treaty obligations, it denounced the West as “hypocrites” - because, after all, they still had air forces, armies and navies.
So why shouldn’t Germany, too? For its own “protection”? And why shouldn’t it develop its own aircraft manufacturing? For “peaceful” purposes?
Left and the Right in the West constantly campaigned against the West’s “hypocrisy” on this, castigating such figures as Churchill, Vansitaart, Londonderry and even Halifax and Chamberlain as “war mongers”.
Fear of electoral backlash in the climate of ’30s-era pacifist sentiment was a major factor contibuting to the advent of Appeasement.
Does this all sound familiar?
No? Well, try this… Say “Iran” and “peaceful nuclear development”.
There was a terrific denouement to the Left’s “struggle against Fascism in the 1930s: The Soviet-Nazi Accord of 1939 and subsequent invasion and liquidation of Poland. It started World War Two.
But, still, to its credit, Labour at least eventually changed its mind on “pacifism” - after all, Labour’s Clement Attlee was UK Prime Minister when the allies bombed Hiroshima.
Nothing much on all of that in the Party library, I suppose.
Not very fond of staying on topic, are we?
I’m starting to suspect that you’re actually Dolly Downer. Too much time on your hands and historical “understanding” characterised only by a desire to score silly partisan points.
“Fear of electoral backlash in the climate of ’30s-era pacifist sentiment was a major factor contibuting to the advent of Appeasement.”
Capitalising appeasement as a Policy is not the only egregiously false point crammed into this 20 word sentence. I count at least two others. Can you find more? First one with the correct answer wins a peppermint bullseye.
“Does this all sound familiar?”
It certainly does. Can anyone else think of a former commentator here who’d take seriously googled historical data, fling it through a burning hoop of sophistry and then blame his interlocutors for the straw man that flops smouldering to the ground at his feet?
Hmmm. He hasn’t mentioned luvvies, Mr G, or Oxford St yet.
Not that bad penny Mark. I’m thinking of quite another form of currency altogether.
Don’t be cruel Nabs.
Sometimes I miss that guilt-ridden, self-torturing ultra-montanist.
But, on the other hand, I guess he had to stop it before he went blind.
You could always pop over to Catallaxitive to find out what you’ve been missing…
Paul Burns says;
No, it deals with Britain, the USA, France and Italy. And the ALP was no more “avowedly socialist” under Whitlam than under his protege Keating.
The sorts of major social transformations and social and political movements you mention, including the anti-war movement, feminism, black rights and environmental battles, “just to mention some of the issues”, largely originated in the USA. No social democrats there, buddy.
As Marwick’s book makes perfectly clear, these were very complex movements where much of the initiative was taken by prosperous, educated, liberal-leaning urbanites.
Oddly, some of the more avowedly Marxist or otherwise socialist adventures of the time, for example the UK Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), petered out after a while, though bits and pieces of their rhetoric and symbolism were picked up by student-based movements like the anti-Vietnam war movement.
In fact, the major engines for lasting social change, especially those focussed on young people, were invariably centred around private enterprise regardless of whether it was in the USA, the UK or elsewhere - recording studios, publishing, the fashion industry, the arts, films.
This is not to say socialists and various marxisant offshoots weren’t a part of the action. But they weren’t decisive. Or even dominant.
Take the Civil Rights movement in the USA. Or indeed the early Aboriginal rights movement in Australia. People like Martin Luther King weren’t socialist. Charlie Perkins AO wasn’t a socialist, and expressly based his early campaigns not on socialist models but the US civil rights movement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Perkins
Black labour unions in the USA which pushed for improved conditions for sanitation workers weren’t socialist. The anti-segregation ‘Freedom Riders’ weren’t socialist.
You refer to Whitlam’s “achievements (having) become too engrained in our society.”
Well, Australia isn’t socialist - and never was.
While Australia was voting on the 1967 Referendum on Aboriginal citizenship (not under Labour) socialism in Poland was eliminating the final remnants of its Jews.
That sort of thing at the time didn’t feature prominently as a concern with left wing groups in Australia, but they could nonetheless rev themselves into a frenzy about segregation in Alabama.
Elliot,
My last word on this, because as other contributors have noted, it is getting a bit off thread. The late 1920s and up to about 1938 saw an international climate of disarmament, except in the Axis countries. (here, somewhat inaccurately, I include Spain.) Disarmament and appeasement are not the same thing. The movement to disarmament from both left and right was a response to the perceived horrors of the Great War, as well as a happy coincidence in the West with the Great Depression.In the Soviet Union Stalin almost single-handedly destroyed the upper echelons of the Red Army with his execution of experienced officers. In regard to the Air Force generally, most western countries did not have a great faith or reliance on air defence. Britain in particular was dependent on the ‘blue water’ policy.That meant the British Navy, in case you didn’t get it. Australia stands out as being slightly different because in John Curtin, even before he bacame leader of the ALP, we had a leader who recognised the potential of air defence. This was actually very rare at the time. The international peace movement in the 1920s and 30s was concerned with disarmament not appeasement, as others have already pointed out to you above in different words. The appeasers of Fascism were the politicians of the right. They adopted this policy because Hitler was anti-communist, and because some of them actually agreed with what he was doing in Germany, including his anti-semitism. (Hitler had not at this point dreamt up the Final Solution -that happened in January 1942.) What the right saw happening in Germany, and implicitly approved of, was a particularly viscious series of pograms, which were not exactly new in European history. I can’t be bothered responding to any more of your ahistorical, ill-informed right wing garbage.
I wonder if John has said “Dammit Janet I should have left in 06″ or “this is another fine mess you have got me into” (apologies to Rocky H & Stan & Ollie)
Paul — at the risk of pushing the thread further off topic — I wonder if you could please expand a little on Curtin and air defence? My thesis is on the fear of the bomber in Britain prior to 1941, and I’ve found that there was a shift in favour of air defence in 1938 there (mainly due to information coming out of Spain). I don’t know much about the Australian case, so I’m curious to see if/how it matches up …
mainly due to information coming out of Spain….
Thats my understanding too, Condor legion and (in latter stages Stukas) was extremely effective - in fact, Franco may not have been the goods without it.
But by 1941, would the Brits also have had the fall of France in mind? Stukas wrought absolute havoc in the that (short) battle.
Eliot & Paul Burns,
Katz & Kim
Thanks to Eliot & Paul B for conducting a debate with plenty of concrete examples and conclusions. No thanks at all to Katz & Kim, who fire off a few insults and seem to think that’s a good minute’s work. It doesn’t wash with me, at least.
I think it’s very germane to consider what happened in Europpe and around the globe in the 1930s, and the actions and words of the participants in those years. We now have the benefit of an extra 70 years of biography, archival digging, newly available material, reconsideration of attitudes etc. No final answers, but much more to sift through and consider. Eliot and Paul have done so; good on you both.
It’s just as germane to consider what Australian politicians and people did during (say) 1930-1950.
In considering the Indochina conflicts which touched us in the 1960s and 1970s, and touch us still, it’s germane to consider what France, USSR, China, Thailand, SEATO, USA, Australia, etc were doing…. and useful (I think) to try and keep an open mind. There are trials going on in Cambodia right now of several top Khmer Rouge (KR) “leaders”. The shambles and bloodshed of the DRK “government” they led was “situated” in both regional and international contexts, during the Cold War. But the DRV and PRG leaderships didn’t behave like Pol Pot’s crew. Why not? I think we need to know. The better to understand our region. The better to avoid murderous outcomes in the future. There were Aussies who applauded the KR victory in April 1975. At what point did those Aussies realise the dream had nightmarish nuances? IMHO, it’s one thing to scoff at predictions of a “Red bloodbath”; quite another to come to terms with a bloodbath when it unfolds in an isolated far-off land under the control of a secretive regime.
Eliot and Paul can see some parallels between old history and current history. Why others see this topic as an opportunity to fling insults, I can’t fathom. Several months ago on another thread I foolishly opined that KPD members in Germany in the 1930’s had acted as cat’s paws of Stalin. Herr Katz (Frau Katz?) leapt to their defence. I still don’t understand why.
auf wiedersehen
Well, I wasn’t referring so much to the effectiveness of bombers in Spain, but rather evidence that they were in fact vulnerable to enemy fighters (and so needed escorts themselves) and so on, and also that the people of Spain generally didn’t lose their sanity under aerial bombardment (though some tried to put this down to their sunny, Mediterranean disposition, which the British lacked). This was contrary to so much received wisdom in the 1930s that it took a while to sink in, but in 1938 there was a shift towards a realisation that hey, the bomber will not always get through after all. That’s my take on it, anyway.
In 1940, the German blitzkrieg — not so much the Stukas as such, they were too short-ranged to do much work across the Channel — was indeed feared in Britain: that’s why the British referred to the Blitz. I could go on and on (and on) about this but won’t
Oh, but I can refer interested readers to a couple of relevant posts on my blog: http://airminded.org/2006/11/21/spain-and-the-aeroplane/ and http://airminded.org/2007/06/20/from-blitzkrieg-to-blitz/ — I’d apologise again for the off-topicness but I suppose it would be less convincing this time around 
Brett,
I did work in this area quite some time ago, but, from memory the info. about Curtin contemplating the importance of an Australian Air Force comes from A. Chester’s John Curtin, Melbourne 1943. It was apparently one of those things Curtin contemplated on Cottesloe Beach prior to being made leader. Chester was on Curtin’s staff - I think he was press secretary or the equivalent thereof. While his work is undoubtewdly hagiographic and wartime propaganda, it does contain some little gems you won’t find elsewhere, most of which can be backed up from later sources by implication.. There’s probably no need to tell you this, but you should also have a good look at Horner’s High Command, John McCarthy’s two books on the Air Force and Imperial Defence. My book on The Brisbane Line Controversy will be useful for home defence. All these books should be available in a good university library or on ILL. Glad to be of help.
Brett at 72.
Brett,
You should also have a look at George Fairbanks, “Isolationalism v. Imperialism: The 1937 Election”, Politics, II, 2, 1967. I am not totally up to date on this stuff as I haven’t researched it for years. There must surely be other material about I[’m not now aware of. Again, glad to be of help.
Interesting that Howard did end up having a dinner date with Dubya in the White House last week, and the younger generation was well represented:
Plenty of “networking opportunities”, I’m sure.
Paul
My memory of researching this a while back is that in a speech he made in 1936/7, after becoming Opposition Leader, in criicising the them government’s imperial defence policyCurtin argued that Australia’s best contribution to Imperial defence was through ensuringthat it could defend itself so that it would not be a burden on the rest of the Empire and that in doing so it should build up its defence industries and that he mentioned the manufacture of aircraft as part of this. It’s a while back but I have a vague recolection that the speech was in reply to the then government’s budget speech.
Paul Burns says:
Well, here are my final words on it, then, too: The Soviet-Nazi Pact of August 1939.
And whether you want to quibble about the semantic differences between, say, the UK Labour Party policy calling for the unilateral “disarmament” of the West or Labour’s George Lansbury trying to get Britain out of the war in 1939, versus Chamberlain’s attempts at “appeasing” Hitler, it was the Conservatives who led Britain through the war and included Labour’s Attlee and Greenwood in the War Cabinet.
Greg M, Recall something similar. Think Curtin was also deeply influenced by General Wynter’s 1931 [?]speech. Horner covers it in some detail in High Command - have actually read it [the sppeech] in its entirety, but chucked a lot of that material years ago.
Eliot,
There were more people on the left than the comms. The Disarmament process was a Government to Government thing, mainly through the League of Nations.(It was also ultimately a bit of a failure, at trhe risk of stating the obvious.) The Peace Movement was separate and had a whole lot of lefties, comms, pacifists, socialists, fellow-travellers,what we’d call NGOs etc.
Thanks, Paul. I’ve got McCarthy’s Australia and Imperial Defence which mentions that in 1937 Curtin advocated expanding the RAAF to 51 squadrons, but doesn’t say what those squadrons were to be equipped with. I’ll look further when I have the time.