Liam's blog
In Arrogance The Wicked Persecute The Poor
If I were to have a scriptural quotation in a gunsight I’d want to do better than this lot.
Coded references to biblical passages are inscribed on gunsights widely used by the US and British military in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has emerged.
The markings include “2COR4:6” and “JN8:12”, relating to verses in the books of Corinthians II and John.
Trijicon, the US-based manufacturer, was founded by a devout Christian, and says it runs to “Biblical standards”.
Come on. Christ the light of the world? That’s supposed to be inspiring for the squaddies?
Manufacturer: I’ll have mine with the full text of Psalm 10 please.
Queen of Speed
Cool.
In 1929 Hellé, driving an Omega-Six, won the Grand Prix Féminin at Montlhéry, becoming ‘the fastest woman in the world’ by lapping the steep-sided bowl at 198 kph. Her preparation for the race had been less than ideal: ‘A green-eyed boy, a friend of one of the costume makers at the casino, had stayed the night. A mixture of morphine, champagne and sex had left her wanting to crawl into a coal hole when she woke up.’
Intellectually, I support compulsory seatbelts, mandatory motorcycle helmets, drink driving laws, speed limits, automatic cameras, stringent engineering safety standards and compulsory third party insurance for all. But there’s something about the interwar motoring culture that’s just… awesome.
No, Mister Rees, I expect you to die
In the story, Kemal Atatürk, prototypical pre-Turkish patriot and butcher, ordered the conscript troops defending Gallipoli from the invaders to die, in order that other troops might take their places.
Paul Howes, ex-Trotskyist turned Murdoch editorialist of the AWU, reads from the same songsheet.
The scorched-earth press conference of Thursday morning, when Mr Rees said any challenger would be a “puppet of Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi”, was condemned by AWU national secretary Paul Howes as “a great disservice to his party”.
“The good news of that press conference is it sealed his [Rees’s] fate,” he added.
We’re only beginning to see this meme; that assertiveness and honesty in defence of a Premiership is traitorous in the Left, while shadowy maneouvring is admirable and correct in the Right. It’s not a disservice to the Party, you see, while in the absence of any particular crisis or policy dispute, to do the numbers and knock off a Premier. It’s a disservice to the Party for that Premier not to be a member of the NSW Centre Unity faction.
Left of the NSW Labor Party! You are not asked to fight. You are asked to be dutifully and uncomplaningly stabbed for no particular reason in order that the Right may enjoy purposeless hegemony.
Take their names, take their names
Andrew West quotes Evatt:
The attitude of a small minority group of Labor members, particularly in Victoria, has, since 1949, become increasingly disloyal to the Labor movement and the Labor leadership.
The Daily Telegraph lists the putschists’ puppets:
The document cited (sic) by the Daily Telegraph includes rebel MPs Paul Gibson, Nick Lalich, Noreen Hay, Eddie Obeid, John Della Bosca, Joe Tripodi, Matt Brown, Grant McBride, Cherie Burton, Ninos Khoshoba (sic), Rob Furollo (sic), Frank Terenzini, Richard Amery, Tony Stewart, Tanyia Gadiel (sic) and Diane Beamer…
What a list. These are the people I joined the Labor Party to fight.
Abbott: A Communiqué From The Leftist Central Committee
[TRANSMISSION BEGINS]
Greetings, sisters and brothers of the underground movement the Australian Left.
It is with no small amount of righteous glee that we greet the Partyroom accession of Tony Abbott to the Leadership of the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party. Such violent cupidity is typical of the imperialist hyenas in the Coalition. In this time of crisis it is no longer possible for these enemies of the people to hide behind more palatable puppets as Turnbull or Hockey. Every action further reveals them either as dangerous tools or as “village idiots”—as Mr Tuckey shamelessly quipped.
That Mr Abbott is a reactionary droog whose every thought is counter to the interests of all peace-loving people of the globe will be our movement’s most powerful tool. We will use the weight of the reactionaries to bring them down upon themselves—weak in its own ideology, the monster cannot support its own mass.
However, this is not the same as simply asserting that Mr Abbott is a Catholic. That’s just vaguely sectarian innuendo. C’mon people we can do better than that. The Central Committee hereby forbids such juvenilia upon pain of summary wedgie.
No seriously man give me the microphone back I’ll kick yer arse back to
[TRANSMISSION ENDS]
We the elite
Exceptions and Public Safety
13.12. There shall be no right to participate
in public policy-making, except by way of
parliamentary and other election.
(from the Democratic Audit project, via the UK’s liberal conspiracy).
The Scabs Get Bacon And Sausage Baguettes
If you’re following someone else’s strike in another industry in a foreign country, I find it’s always nice to get the juicy details. Negotiation points and arbitration be damned, pay rates and award schedules aren’t the stuff of which solidarity is made; I want to hear about—as journalists say—the personal interest.
At a certain point one of the vans went screeching out. And then, about ten minutes later, it came speeding back in again. It was driven by one of the managers who used to be a postie. You could see from the look on her face that she’d rather be outside with us.
Word came out that the van wasn’t on Royal Mail business at all. It had gone to fetch bacon and sausage baguettes.
That, there, is a slice of life.
In other news, stoush.net has apparently joined the ranks of food bloggers. Keep reading for the inevitable 1940s car sex.
That's what she said
I can think of no better place than Mount Ainslie, if I were a Satanist in the ACT and I wanted to celebrate a Black Mass near Parliament. It’s not clear if it’s Crowley’s, LaVey’s, or some other kind of ritual, but then if you’re in Canberra, I suppose, you take what quasi-gnostic rituals you can get.
Catch the Fire Ministries pastor Daniel Nalliah has organised a “prayer offensive” to combat evil forces including witchcraft, homosexuality and abortion.
The discovery of a “black mass altar” at Mount Ainslie in Canberra by a group of school students had inspired him to organise a prayer gathering at the area on Saturday.
“The type of altar discovered on Mount Ainslie pointed to a black mass and the work of dark forces wanting to cast spells on Australia and federal parliament,” Mr Nalliah said.
That’s… what she said.
Hey Hey It's Jew-Face
Channel 9 are un-Australian, and if you really want to know why you can ready plenty of why here. We don’t do blackface in this country (well you probably know we did if you read Richard Waterhouse or Melissa Bellanta, but if you do, you’re probably un-Australian too).
The Aussie tradition is Jew-face. I certainly like to think that if Roy was alive, he’d be a star on Hey Hey it’s Saturday—primed with Sabbath jokes, sponsorship deals and quasi-Yiddish innuendo inappropriate for the timeslot—with Effie Stephanidis, Con the Fruiterer, Habib from Pizza and the Wog Boy as walk-on cameos in his act.
In all his glory, he is pictured below. Gong ‘im, Red!
Fer 'arf a mo' I 'as a fight
Back in June, brother-fellow-worker Lefty E interrupted his oppressively monomaniacal posting about Portuguese colonial forts in Asia to recommend that jewel of Australian silent film, the Song of the Sentimental Bloke—the 1919 version of CJ Dennis’s poem.
He wasn’t wrong. It’s got high drama, police brutality and highly stoushful arse-kicking, and it even ends with a wedding. And it’s being shown, musically accompanied, in Sydney on the 18th.