An open thread, where at your weekend leisure, you can discuss anything you like.
24 Responses to “Saturday Salon”
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well well well - frist! and so to bed.
Everyone:
Probably second [we’ll see].
Just returned from a couple of hundred kilometers round-trip accompanying a bloke with mechanical skills to rescue a woman, her kids, her worldly possessions and her couple-of-hundred-dollars car. They are transmigrants - or internal migrants - defying all the restrictions on movement for the “undeserving” and all the official harassment to seek a better life in Central Queensland. Good luck lady.
What’s the bet that oil will be below $100 by the end of the year rather than $200 - $300 so confidently predicted by the usual suspects. It’s down below $110 now, having dropped $35 in less than 2 months.
Chutzpa of the week:
We need a cartoonist who could depict some mayhem in Iraq, Afghanistan; threats to Iran etc, with the caption:
Well, well, well, I see the Conservatives still haven’t mastered the intertubes…
http://www.liberalnationalparty.com
Peter Kemp comment when decrypted: All situations are identical.
– j_p_z, sawing a 4×2 with a hawk, whilst practicing falconry with a handsaw
Did anyone else see one of the commentators on Channel 7 do the “draw your eyes back to make a racist joke” gesture, I think it was on Thursday? Does anyone know who it was? I was in a kind of fugual state at the time and now I’m regretting the fact that I didn’t ring the channel to complain. Anyone see it?
I love how Julia Gillard is appearing in TV advertisements for Murdoch papers these days. Maybe that has been a subject of some discussion elsewhere and I missed it? “Gillard turns News Limited shill” etc, etc.
And yeah, I saw that too Helen. It wasn’t one of the commentators. It was all four of them at once. I have no idea of their names, but no doubt they each host some appalling Channel 7 reality show. It followed a segment where one the male commentators was made up in traditional Chinese fashion. They were trying to recreate the effect on his eyes. They must live in a parallel universe where that kind of thing couldn’t possibly offend anyone. By the way, I wasn’t watching all this properly; I had it one mute while reading. I swear!
BBB
Anyone got the goss. on the dude who’s cybersquatting on the domain name of liberalnationalparty dot org?
Here’s his MySpace page: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=69802126 He’s got a lot of other domain names. Seems to be saying that he does it for fun and/or as a public service …
Anyone who reads pronunciamentos of world leaders cannot be a stranger to hypocrisy.
I have perhaps been identifiable as a detractor of Bush.
But I think the way the US has handled the Georgia crisis merits praise.
It is clear that Russia has no credibility where it really counts — in the hearts and minds of Georgians.
The US has marshalled the heterogeneous NATO powers very well.
But more potently, the US has wielded well its soft power as promoter and defender of representative democracy.
Clearly, in the long term, the aspirations of non-Georgian minorities must be accommodated in some way.
But in the meantime Russia has discovered to its cost its inability to legitimise expansion of its sphere of influence.
Russia acted very rashly when it invaded Georgia.
“Clearly, in the long term, the aspirations of non-Georgian minorities must be accommodated in some way.”
Certainly killing 2000 of them and sending 20,000 to Russia as refugees didn’t work.
Katz, re:
And the corollary: It is clear that USA has no credibility where it really counts — in the hearts and minds of Ossetians and Abkhazians.
Marshalled Katz? With ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Europe split down the middle and likely to be further apart on the issue of Georgia and Ukraine in future?
I’d suggest that soft power has markedly declined in the last 7 years owing to the double standards and hypocrisy emanating from the Bush administration. When the “wrong” party was elected, such as Hamas, what did so called “defenders” of democracy do when that happened?
They will be, and are but chances of Georgians being their political overlords are zero in say the next 50 years.
The expansion of its sphere is a given. Legitimacy is irrelevant IMHO with Mao’s dictum “power grows out of the barrel of a gun” and the EU and US in particular, impotent to do anything else but bleat pious but hypocritical platitudes about bullying and intimidation. How can they threaten Russia with economic sanctions without shooting themselves in the foot? (again) Need Russia’s help with Iran? Sure, kick them out of the G8, would that help? Likewise the WTO. The west needs Russia more than they need us.
It was actually a masterstroke. They have reversed decades of humiliation since the USSR fell apart. Encirclement policies of the US have clearly been seen to have failed with their Georgian provocation. Russia is back as a major operator in world politics and will not be messed with in its own backyard. Poland, the Ukraine and the Baltic states are scared shitless, again.
Not bad for 5 days work!
WTO, I meant to qualify that with the issues of admission, not that Russia is a member yet.
Kim has a new post on Georgia, if people want to take the discussion over there. Just a suggestion! But it would help the flow of the debate since this discussion might be legitimately be interrupted by people talking about other stuff.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/08/16/georgia-evil-reality-and-war/
Helen, apparently that Yum Cha club on Seven is the pits. Can’t bear to watch such rot, but there have been complaints in several places.
Everyone:
Further to my post No.2 yesterday: Apparently the lady seeking a better life for her kids in Queensland picked up several hundred dollars in fines [in NSW] for minor, even trivial, vehicle faults.
She dared to move out of her parish and into another parish without all the blessings of her betters - therefore she, and other peasants like her, must be punished for not accepting the natural order of things.
We do indeed live in the Elizabeth age …. that of Elizabeth I, not II.
Check out this disgusting piece of deception from Wayne Swan on FuelWatch:
“Treasurer Wayne Swan said he hoped FuelWatch proceeded despite reports some government MPs would be happy to see the Senate knock it back.
“I know some people turn their nose down a bit at the prospect that people could save $10 or so, on a tank of petrol, but we don’t,” he told ABC TV.”
Prospect. Could. Or so. There’s no evidence that FuelWatch in WA has lowered prices to anywhere near that extent, and certainly no evidence that it would have that effect nation-wide. He knows this full well; he’s a smart guy. It’s just dishonest.
BBB
If that is the case, why is the WA Liberal Leader vowing to retain Fuelwatch if he wins the State Election ?
Because he doesn’t want to shoulder the political risk of post-election petrol price rises? I can see it now: crude oil prices kick up a few months after the election and after FuelWatch has been ditched. The ALP pipe up with: “this would never have happened if FuelWatch were still around”. A devastating narrative that cannot be disproved. I mean, he’s not a complete idiot, is he?
BBB
Sixty Minutes was in full AGW denial mode this evening. Tara Brown is lowlife. She challenged Rudd several times about his commitment to AGW and Rudd several times had to tell her that he had to go by what his scientific advisors were telling him. If I had been in Rudd’s place I would have punched her in the nose.
The government has a mandate for fuelwatch from the election BBB. Even Gerard Henderson, on Insiders, said the opposition has the wrong strategy on this one.
If it does not work let it be seen.
Mind you, Hendo also gave Rudd the crack up advice, in quietly considered tone, ‘not to travel so much in the first term because John Howard didn’t’.
Moderate Liberals in Queensland set to form new Party.
AT least half the members of the former Queensland Liberal Party have failed to join the newly merged Liberal National Party.
[The LNP claimed this week that just two of the 5000 former Liberals had quit the new party.
But the decision by thousands of Liberals to turn their backs on the LNP threatens to undermine claims by its leadership that the new party will invigorate conservative politics in Queensland.
The development raises the prospect of continuing turmoil in coalition ranks, with moderate Liberals contemplating the formation of another political party.]
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24215736-5006786,00.html
Brough in threat to be sued.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24215739-5006786,00.html
One obvious reason why many Queensland Liberal memberships are not being renewed in the new LNP (”Only one in two Queensland Liberals join new LNP” 21/8/08) is that the new LNP constitution no longer provides an ability to sign up members to “stack” branches and conventions.
Unlike before, all state seats in the LNP will now get the same number of delegates regardless of how many members live in that electorate. So only the “real” members will renew their membership now. You also have to live in your electorate to vote in a preselection. So those not so real members from outside ones electorate can slip away.
Also membership has gone from something like $20 to $80. Another reason for only real members to sign up.
In the end its a win for democracy.