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[Media Dragon] who writes in blood and aphorisms does not want to be read, he wants to be learned by heart. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra They say all politics is local but in the end all politics is actually personal. On a day after the election it is important to be superstitious about the elections as myths add something interesting to political life. We need to admit that politics and literature are really the same coin and like success and failure there is a fine line between the two sides. Politics is the dragon head while literature is the dragon tail. Literature is all about our personal emotional tales and reading someone else’s obituary or memoirs helps us to remember our own memory of childhood; our own identity and the identity of the significant others; but most of all literature helps us to explore the myths and realities of global village and the oddness of the neverending political number crunching. If maintaining awareness of myths has any use in society, it is that it keeps in mind the human capacity for belief. As Bertrand Russell said: Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones. Pundits pouring over the election results should consider reading this educational story about some strange social-psychological truths. Mark Latham represented the capacity to believe via our hearts while John Howard represented our need to believe through our heads. As you do, sometimes we let the heads to win. Central Europeans tend to read so much into the symbolic game played on the Anzac day. The two-ups was so foreign to me at the Winston Hills Hotel where I first met Lauren all those years ago ... In many ways, the Australian elections are really a legal game of two-ups. Speaking of two-ups and truths, Pope John Paul in his new book observes: Communism was a necessary evil that God allowed to happen to create opportunities for good after its demise. The full extent of the evil that was raging through Europe was not seen by everyone, not even by those of us who were living at the epicentre. We were totally swallowed up in a great eruption of evil. Eye on A Road More Travelled and Mutual Surprise: Has Australia and Afghanistan Missed Their Date with Destiny? The First Two Global Elections I can’t think of a better example of a more internationally watched election results than the Saturday election Down Under. H.L. Mencken once suggested that in a well-run universe, everybody would have two lives, one for observing and studying the world, and the other for formulating and setting down his conclusions about it. This is more or less the way that the Liberal Party has contrived to arrange things. On the state government level the liberal party members are studying how not to deliver local services or run state schools, hospitals or railways. While on the federal level the party is implementing their own policy conclusions about the realities of daily family lives. Alas, much of Howard’s achievement is married to the failures of the state governments, especially the lesson they have learnt when John Fahey lost the unloseable election in 1995. Privately a number of people who were close to the Paul Keating’s camp admit that it is unlikely the federal election would have been lost if John Fahey was actually the Liberal Premier of NSW in 1996. The trick in Australia is to keep the Labour Government in power at the state level especially in NSW where 50 out of 150 seats happen to be • Why has the economic development-first myth prevailed? ; [ A country in Howard's image: The kitten games of syntax and rhetoric; The Flag of Fairfax the SMH Provides a Coverage of the Day After the Election] [I gather that this week the New York Times will be assessing its own attitude to editorials on elections. Will the NY Times follow the extraordinary example set in concrete by the Sydney Morning Herald last week in relation to the impartial editorial advice during the election campaign?] • · Google is launching a new search engine which would allow anyone to search the content of books online, from Cold Mountain to Cold River, and observers are saying that the move could help touch off an important shift in the balance of power between companies that produce books and those that sell them. GoogleLit On The Way ; [Sergey Brin and Larry Page know too well that you only live twice and as a result Frankfurt witnesses yet another pioneering debut. My story made its first International Debut at Frankfurt last October (Thanks to James Cumes) Cold River & Haverleigh: Giving Survivors Voices; Ach, Southern Star International is making another film history, Australia's most popular family drama series, McLeod's Daughters, has cracked the all-important US television market: Our Birriga Road next door neighbour of Seven Years; Sonia Tod ] • · · You don’t need the bullet if you got the ballot What happens when we vote? Czech Out Jana Wendt Greens smiling, despite Coalition win ; • · · · The ancient world is on a Hollywood roll. First Gladiator, then Troy, and now Alexander the greatest • · · · · Social Justice and Democracy: Investigating the Link. Democracy and social justice, defined as the just distribution of opportunities and life-chances, go together ; [Czech Out Mark Riley] • · · · · · It is quite amazing what our emails hide when we dare to open it. Last week I came across an email from Jozef Vernic (translating into Slavic as Believe Nothing) which included ny.com in the email address. I was suspicious, however, since it had the subject title Cold River I opened it. It was not a spam. In fact, Jozef read my story and related to me his story of the escape across the Iron Curtain. Yesterday I also hesitated whether to open an email with Cold River in a subject title and this time Rick from Texas included this rather odd link: Cold River was code word for execution [I did not know it was possible to be so miserable & live but I am told that this is a common experience. Evelyn Waugh, letter to Harold Acton]