* — meaning, mosh-pit.
** — no ID required, but there’s a pun.

“Kokoda Cresent” sounds like an interesting film - hadn’t heard of it before.

Wonder if anyone has tried to sell it on the European Union market? With a plot like that, it would be a real goer. [This is 2008, there are no dubbing/subtitling problems …. only dubbing/subtitling procedures].

Meant Spooks rock!
And global warming.

“I was never a soldier, I was a civilian! OK, a heavily armed civilian I grant you.”

Just sayin…

I think you’re a bit hard on him re the apology. The outstanding feature of that I thought was that there were no qualifiers, no statements about ‘…made with the best intentions…” - just an admission of wrong.

Robert: some excellent thoughts. I do hope you’re right and individuals rise to the challenge. It is part of our past, of course. We had some woeful colonial administrators at times and virtually had to take local initiatives.

I remember at one time being very angry with the Hawke Government about something and thinking of the analogy with Thackeray’s novel “Vanity Fair” especially the subtitle “A Novel without a Hero”. I was thinking out government was a bit like that, including the vanity bit. Obviously I was harsh. It’s clear now that the hawke Government was one of our best, and it did indeed have some heroes, especially further down the food chain.

the modern PM always puts the photo opportunity before the deep thought, does he not? Scripted, scripted, scripted…..

You’d think it would occur to him just how stupid it looks for him to make an incredibly important decison, like to let Brumby get away with murdering the murray, and only after its all over, and the damage of bad faith done, only then to actually visit the lakes(?) and say “you know what stuns me, is how bad things are”.

Word, Danny (she said from Adelaide).

Danny, you sound more like Piers Ackerman, than a Laborite.

Perhaps find yerself a time machine, grab the Labor war boys, bring them back here & point them in the direction of Iraq. You might be surprised by their response.

To hold them in my hands a moment, the word ‘greatness’ comes to mind, as something lost, in modern comparisons. The core word ‘great’ remains today, as shell, gutted also by overuse but to read Don’s comment reconnects to a time when the understanding of greatness was something to aspire to, and nowadays the dripping stain in your memory’s grasp laments not only for those who cared not for it, or denied it altogether, but the bulk today who never knew that word at all.

Indeed, we are living in a time when the world has lost sight of it.

Upon consideration this is pretty wild. What might have happened, if a positive is allowed to live, is that the shift is taking place whereby the person seeking it elsewhere now makes real of their own greatness.

To say so, flying in the face of what is thrashed about your head as ‘human nature’ being that people are ultimately self-interested, is the stuff of dreaming. Delusion, madness, and naiveté. “We’re not to convene with the gods, for by that very definition they exist outside of you”.

Yet to believe in humanity is to believe in how a person handles daily challenge, in his or her own way, and come up for the greater good, beyond the childlike me-ness as how it’s boxed back and sold, and consumed, though that is hidden spectacularly.

No; in the face of massive potent challenge, I think people are going better than well. When leadership is lacking, though it kills us slowly in the lapse, people do take hold themselves. And if we are delivered a blancmange of journeymen who present without a greatness, we take it upon ourselves to find it anyway. Again, if a positive is allowed to live, it would be that a shift from power of the singular outsourced leader to the ‘greatness’ within, bit by difficult bit, is being embraced by those who’d never consider the question of it.

We’ve lost great leadership, as it has been understood, or framed, throughout history. But these are brave new times, and I’ll back the new world in, including the way it’s being led.

He could grow it I suppose, I certainly hope so. You’d think it would occur to him just how stupid it looks for him to make an incredibly important decison, like to let Brumby get away with murdering the murray, and only after its all over, and the damage of bad faith done, only then to actually visit the lakes(?) and say “you know what stuns me, is how bad things are”.

Somehow I think Curtin would have visited first, decided after. I hope someone makes Kev listen to the show. Then again, I thought the apology speech was a pretty ordinary effort, so what would I know.

It’s a bit frightening to think about it and realise how our party-ist system, where we vote for who- or what-ever one machine or other spits out, isn’t one that guarantees talent, or even sincerity, gets the gong. Quite the opposite: I was surprised when I got to see the front bench up close (at a community cabinet) just how ordinary they mostly actually are.

Hearing about the freedom of Ingrid Betancourt led me to this:

Luis Carlos Galán

Galán was largely influenced by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin ideas and Nikos Kazantzakis’s books. His father Mario described him as a person fascinated with spirituality, the man with integrity, an individual struggle for knowing one’s self between good and evil and that the effort to achieve it consisted in the main objective in life, not only individually, but collectively.[2]

«La sensibilidad social del autor, el hombre integral que buscaba y la lucha interna que Kazantzakis padeció y soportó a través de su vida entre el ángel y la bestia, entre la naturaleza interior y superior del hombre, entre el mundo pasional y el espíritu, lo fascinaban dice su padre- la búsqueda de esa trascendencia espiritual y el esfuerzo para realizarlo constituía para Luis Carlos el objetivo de la vida, no solamente en lo individual sino también en lo colectivo».

“ Once again the Colombian men turn passionate; but their passion is not that of the parties, the one that perverted their spirits and pushed thousands of countrymen to death towards phantoms of selfish ideals. Now our passion is Colombia and we believe in this ideal as the only one capable of uniting the whole country.”

- Luis Carlos Galán - Revista Vértice, May 1964.

“ For Colombia, always forward, not a single step backwards, and whatever is a necessity let it be.

(wiki pedia)
————-

And who would’ve thought that Huffington Post, 23/6 (satirical news) & Dickipedia (not Wikipedia) would connect themselves to a Death Star-like entity (see Barry Diller & IAC - InterActiveCorp)…goes to SHOW…that you can’t trust much coming out of the New Roman Empire.

Clones everywhere. If it ain’t one soft drink, it’s another. If it ain’t one sports clothing franchise, it’s another…same goes for fast food. And social networking sites. Two-sides of the same coin. Some alternatives eh?…blaaah.

There always tracking our movements, likes, dislikes…views…always adapting…killer virus…w/ big maw, chameleons.

N’

Some time back RN ran a series on Curtin’s letters. I didn’t catch all of it, but there were some interesting exchanges. In one with Menzies, both leaders showed great integrity and respect for each other (something I didn’t expect from Ming).

In my opinion the outstanding feature of Curtin and Chifley is their humility. Neither saw themselves as anything but ordinary Australians, and it showed in their relations with others. It is a trait which seems to be missing from many of our current leaders. Don Dunstan, despite his public persona as an egoist, also possessed humility. There were plenty not quite at the top such as John Button, Jim Killen or Barry Jones. But alas, the present system seems to demand ego-driven keaders.

Curtin arguably remains our most interesting leader for his humanity. He overcame what should have been daunting setbacks such as alcoholism, cowardice and self-doubt to lead Australia through its darkest hours. He must have known his relentless overseeing would weaken and kill him but he could not cease. He carried the fears not for his own safety but his soldiers and citizens who depended on him getting it right.

“ive got some serious, sexy crap to tell you”.