The Australian Parliament: Time For Reformation

The argument that powerful government equals economic efficiency has been blown out of the cold river.
· Harry Evans [A Rare Clerk; who is not even a parliamentary Marco Polo]

Carry out your blogging dream, no matter how unlikely it may seem

The moral is: if you want to score with Google, be on the web. Otherwise, go whistle.
· Band Of Bloggers [Observing the Observers]

Strange Plasma Logic
Strange websites have found us
strangewebsites have tracked us down
They're going to destroy
our casual joys
But we will go on blogging
or find a new town.
*Doors Down Under

$4 million gets you nowhere nowadays...
· Media Dragon Deaydreams and Slays $4million on website
[Whirpool]

If I could not take refuge in posterity, in the certainty that with time my work will find its rightful place (an illusory refuge I know, but it’s the only one and absolutely necessary to the serious man of letters), I would have sent literature to the devil a thousand times.
--Giacomo Leopardi

Being Jozef Imrich My Blog is Duller than Yours

One of my guiding quotes is this one by Dostoevsky: A man may wish upon himself, in full awareness, something harmful, stupid and even completely ironic ... in order to establish his right to wish for the most idiotic things.

Have I shocked you by the ironic things I wrote to you?

I do wish sometimes I had written idiotic things like this:
· Sex Tips From Donald Rumsfeld
I sometime wish I could write under the thumb of Bettina Arndt, Old men in fear of a life stifled by marriage:

If men ever dared to reflect wistfully on former glories of patriarchy, high on the list would be the freedom once enjoyed by the man of the house to come and go as he pleased. That's long gone. The married man today rarely has rights to control his own leisure. Hell, no. He's now on a leash, a very short leash...

· Vanity Fair: Spanking good journalism
· Hiya reviewers

In the three decades since Watergate, this is the first potential scandal I have seen that could make Watergate pale by comparison. If the Bush Administration intentionally manipulated or misrepresented intelligence to get Congress to authorize, and the public to support, military action to take control of Iraq, then that would be a monstrous misdeed.
-- John Dean

Movers and DeLayers We might follow all of the Commandments and still be dull & priggish

People like Tom "I AM the Federal Government" DeLay (not to mention John Ashcroft) are exactly why Thomas Jefferson and James Madison demanded a Bill of Rights be made part of the Constitution. They experienced first-hand, and could foresee, abuse of the awesome powers of the government for political or ideological purposes, or simply criminal activity by powerful elected officials such as theft, retribution, or revenge.
· Hot Revenge [SouthKnox]
· Police State [WashingtonPost]

Movers and Shakespeares If you want to set something afire, you must burn yourself

Despite the rigorous enforcement of hierarchical order throughout the rest of the play (including the execution of his former friend for petty theft), there is a glance here at a vaguely egalitarian "band of brothers." Perhaps this is what appeals to the Republicans the most -- the reality of aristocracy smoothed over by the rhetoric of democracy.
He was fond of war and low company: -- we know little else of him. He was careless, dissolute, and ambitious; -- idle, or doing mischief. In private, he seemed to have no idea of the common decencies of life, which he subjected to a kind of regal licence; in public affairs, he seemed to have no idea of any rule of right or wrong, but brute force, glossed over with a little religious hypocrisy and archiepiscopal advice. . . . Henry, because he did not know how to govern his own kingdom, determined to make war upon his neighbours. Because his own title to the crown was doubtful, he laid claim to that of France. Because he did not know how to exercise the enormous power, which had just dropped into his hands, to any one good purpose, he immediately undertook (a cheap and obvious resource of sovereignty) to do all the mischief he could.
· characterization of Henry [PopPolitics]

PS: In Shakespeare's "Henry VI, Part Two," Jack Cade and his rebels, planning to overthrow the king, share a utopian reverie. "The first thing we do," says one, "let's kill all the tax collectors."
It is surprising -- or is it? -- what glee that passage occasions, even today

21st Century The Long Detour

The difference between ritual Cold War tensions and the terrors of the new era—real and faux—is all too clear. Now we confront a true enemy, an unpredictable, amorphous, almost intangible seething mass of freelancers, many of them highly educated and civilized, others feral, but all acting out of rage against the new American Empire. These popular forces confront American-style capitalism spontaneously, through non-governmental groups that ignore national boundaries. And they operate with little institutional control. Unlike the old enemy, the new one mounts deadly terrorist attacks on symbols of American military and commercial power, is secretly and informally organized, and is widely dispersed. As such it offers few clear targets for political or military engagement.
· It is the price we pay for 50 years of political stagnation [InTheseTimes]
· The Century of the Bully: Winner Takes All [VOW]

Corporate Cultures A Fascinating Portrait of Power and Privilege

The dysfunctional executives have now gone beyond unhappiness and are in danger of committing corporate suicide...

The people at the top of the corporate hierarchy grant themselves privilege after privilege, flaunt those privileges before the men and women who do the real work, then wonder why employees are unmoved by management's invocations to cut costs and boost profitability When I think of the millions of dollars spent by people at the top of the management hierarchy on efforts to motivate people who are continually put down by that hierarchy, I can only shake my head in wonder.
· Shake Heads [SMH ]

Activism Things To Do in 2003-04 Financial Year

Stop consuming content and start creating it.
By stop consuming I don't mean stop buying, or stop viewing, listening, reading, gaming. I mean start approaching the music, films, books, games, etc., as the outward manifestation of someone's creativity rather than as a product to be used up and thrown away. Start a blog! Give yourself permission to do this. You don't have to be good, you just have to do it. If you're already doing this, do it more. Encourage children to do this, however and wherever you encounter them..
· Encourage your employees and co-workers and neighbors to be creative [Corante Ideas]

Herd-Like Desssiresss
Most of us have a herd-like desire to fit in, to be appropriately dressed (which means to be wearing much the same as what everyone else in our group is wearing), to keep up with the Joneses - and, increasingly, to get ahead of the Joneses. Unhappiness sustains economic growth. The marketers and advertisers have to play on, and play up, our discontents, holding out the promise that another tub of margarine - or a Rolex watch - will bring us to nirvana.
· The truth that economists forgot: we're human [SMH ]

Leadership Brawls Moving Emotions: Sound Familiar? A Smirk, a Censored Parliamentary Foto and Talk of Disloyalty

When a man as outstandingly colourless as John Howard decides to postpone his retirement you know that Australia will continue to live in interesting times. For those who haven't read Down Under, Bryson reveals that he often forgets the name of our Prime Minister, a consequence of John Howard being by far the dullest man in Australia. Imagine a very committed funeral home director – someone whose burning ambition from the age of eleven was to be a funeral home director, whose proudest achievement in adulthood was to be elected president of the Queanbeyan and District Funeral Home Directors Association – then halve his personality and halve it again, and you have pretty well got John Howard.(Gustav Husak, former Czech President, used to be described in similar terms
According to Mike Carlton, Peter Costello, without his enfamous smirk, looked as if he had swallowed a weapon of mass destruction at his media conference this week.
Emotions seem to also govern the new Labor Party
Earlier I'd had a phone conversation with Mark Latham, unsuccessful right-wing candidate and staff member [on Carr's staff]. He in tears. Hung up on me. He later phoned in to resign. Bugger him.
· Bugger Him [Sydney Morning Herald]
Kim Beazley will challenge Simon Crean for the ALP leadership on June 16. But Labor needs more than a change at the top to solve its problems. Internal power struggles have become so bitter that even the factions are divided within themselves. Talented candidates with bright ideas find their way into Parliament blocked by factional favourites who put group loyalty ahead of fresh policies. Voters are deserting in disgust, no longer knowing what Labor stands for. John Lyons reports on a party that's tearing itself apart...
· Guerrilla War, Hard Labor & Simon Crean has left the building? [Sunday: Jana Wendt]

Media Lies, damn lies and governments

If news reporting is the first brushstroke of history we ought to do our damnedest to get it right. At every level journalists are trained to be questioning, and for good reason: they have to cover a wide field.
· Truth is not only the first casualty of war, but the road kill of the daily political process [Australian ]
· Really Rare Byrd: Iraq's WMD Intelligence: Where is the Outrage? [CommonDreams.org June 5, 2003]

Michael Kinsley once wrote that within Corridors of Power, a gaffe is when you tell the truth, which is a clever way of saying that honesty is so rare in politics that when someone says something candid, we're all shocked.
· Conservative Journalists' Dirty Little Secret [TomPaine]
· Jayson Blair and Rick Bragg scandals [Editor&Publisher ]

The Year of the Bully: Truth Overboard & Try not to mention the War...
G'Day. I have had a number of rather strange experiences with my computer lately. (smile) However, according to another antibully blogger...I am not alone.
Like many characters who disliked how the unaccountable communism made some people to behave like beasts, I am finding that unczeched culture of contracts for the boys creates bullies who seem to bloom in Parliaments, large corporations and sadly even in many law enforcement agencies...
Indeed, 2003 is shaping out as the year of the Bully. Bullies come in different shapes, ages, nationalities and sizes, but they have one thing in common they are all obsessed with power. Most bullies lean towards a mentality of whatever it takes in order to sieze any leadership positions. In Czechoslovakia Havel spoke for the majority of the taxpayers who unwillingly kept the corrupt government in power, while Down Under Sir William Dean seems to be the answer to the taxpayers' ; yearning for a voice above politics!

Kingston Muddying the waters between guardians and traders

There is indeed a case to be made that the water has been muddied somewhere between the realms of the public and the private and that the central problem is the confusion of value sets. The businessman who aggrandises public responsibility to himself is likely to offend the ordinary person eventually, as will the public servant who wishes to play businessman. Perhaps the core problem is that all the developments described above have been driven by self-serving top dogs - those who have ascended to the commanding heights of both the public and the private sectors and who may now enjoy an unconsciously collusive relationship. In the end, it is always the ordinary person, and that includes the taxpayer, who foots the bill - and smells a rat.
· Webdiary of Modern Bullies [Sydney Morning Herald]

Emotions The sound bite and the fury

A writer who wants to be thought of as the fucking best but doesn't give a fuck what anyone thinks. Oh, the webs we authors weave when we leave the safety of the printed page. I happen to think "A Million Little Pieces" will be a top seller with or without the aggressive hyping -- as the most scalding account of addiction in recent memory, it deserves to be -- but not all publicity is good publicity, and if these take-no-prisoner interviews continue, the book in question may soon be dwarfed by the Other Story: James Frey's bombs bursting in air. He may become the latest cautionary example of how writers compromise themselves the moment they open their mouths.
· Million Pieces [Salon]

· Watergate [Tompaine ]

Google proximity search (within 1,2, or 3 words). This isn't available directly from Google...
· Ooogle

New Media Higher (Blogger) Education Blogging is catching on with academics.

In their skeptical moments, academic bloggers worry that the medium smells faddish, ephemeral. But they also make a strong case for blogging's virtues, the foremost of which is freedom of tone. Blog entries can range from three-word bursts of sarcasm to carefully honed 5,000-word treatises. The sweet spot lies somewhere in between, where scholars tackle serious questions in a loose-limbed, vernacular mode. Blogging lso offers speed; the opportunity to interact with diverse audiences both inside and outside academe; and the freedom to adopt a persona more playful than those generally available to people with Ph.D.'s
· Skeptical moments (Chronicle of Higher Education 06/06/03)