speculative fact
Liberal Stoush: Bishop Fail
I like the Liberal rumble that’s going on at the moment; I enjoy the thought of Malcolm Turnbull privately comparing himself to Alexander the Great as he tackles the Gordian Knot (“familiar as his garter”).
A generally problematic aspect of the Liberal leadership issue, however, is Julie Bishop. Where is she in all this? I mean, supposedly she’s the deputy leader of the Opposition, which believe it or not could be quite a powerful position. Not so powerful as if Bishop had actually stood up and taken the shadow treasury portfolio as was her right, but certainly, on paper, the deputy should be regarded as a natural contender for succession in such a situation as the Opposition currently finds itself. And so I ask, where is she?
It always seemed clear that Bishop’s inclusion in the Opposition lineup was sadly a token gesture, designed to mirror the Labor situation and spin spin spin to counter the clear fact that the Liberal party is a dinosaur of the patriarchy. But I have some sympathy with opinion that regardless of how you get somewhere, what you do when you get there is the important thing. I mean, ideally one would get to the deputy leadership of a major political party on merit alone, but this has never ever been the case in tweedy Liberal land – witness the career trajectory of Alexander Downer - and when you’re contending with a patriarchal right-wing structure operating mostly through cronyism, you surely take your token appointment as part of that structure and run with it as best you can.
Sadly it seems clear that the Liberals have promoted somebody who is apparently unable to take advantage of the current chaos to announce a leadership bid or at least to make some undergroundy rumbling noises of interest in pursuing the leadership in the future. I mean, if Bishop didn’t have leadership ambitions, surely she wouldn’t have accepted a leadership role in the first place? And given this, now is the time to do something with that ambition, surely?
This is mildly unfair to Bishop, of course; given how awful the Liberal party really is, it may be impossible for any woman to ever be the leader. But that’s no reason not to try. The fact that she’s not indicated any wish to do anything but use her potentially key position to be a kind of helpmeet to the prating GPS-inbred leader of the day, melding effortlessly into the patriarchal narrative, makes me wonder what on earth she’s doing in politics and why on earth she accepted the position in the first place.
Naturally, given the circumstance of Bishop’s election to the role of deputy, there’s this inherent comparison with Julia Gillard, who, despite the apparent solidity of the Rudd leadership, is constantly being touted as the next Prime Minister. This is a shocking commentary on the Liberal party as an institution that is a) poison to women of talent and b) more willing to promote a person of apparently little talent to what should be a key leadership role than to make a genuine effort to actually recruit women of talent to its ranks.
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).
Guy Debord's Ghost
Laurie Penny gets all Alinsky on Climate Camp:
We’ve set the bar for the ultimate 21st-century direct action: a protest where nobody apart from press, photographers and twitterhounds turns up at all and they all have to take pictures of each other taking pictures of each other in an infinitely recursive loop of pseudo-political voyeurism until we are all drained entirely or someone behind a camera screen somewhere stumbles across the face of justice.
The spectacle cannot be understood as a mere visual excess produced by mass-media technologies. It is a worldview that has actually been materialized, a view of a world that has become objective.
Online Opinion Republishes My Tripe
So Online Opinion decided to designate one of my posts from last year as a “best blog post of 2007”. They republished it here on Thursday gone. I remain unsure as to the reason that this particular post was chosen, but the response given by OO’s readers was outstanding. In the words of one commenter,
I’m probably too old to understand this. But a “lady” used to be a female who was refined, well-mannered and tasteful.
Now, a “lady” is anything that’s female.
Thanks, Online Opinion!
If nobody stops me, I'm just going to keep posting this shit.
Flies On The Wall
Horrified anti-war protesters report seeing tiny, insect-like objects hovering above their heads and manoevring in unison, and speculate that the Government is using tiny dragon-fly spy-bots to record their every move. Sound like a case of too many druuuugs? Yes, yes it does. But then the article goes on to say this, which is truly astounding and disturbing:
But the Defence Department researchers are experimenting with putting computer chips into moth pupae - the intermediate stage between a caterpillar and a flying adult - and hatching them into healthy “cyborg moths”.
The Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems project aims to create camera-toting insects whose nerves have grown into their internal silicon chip so that wranglers can control their activities.
Even if the technical hurdles are overcome, insect-size fliers will always be risky investments. “They can get eaten by a bird, they can get caught in a spider web,” Professor Fearing said.
This adds a whole new dimension to Sydney’s plague of bogon moths, which have been besieging parliament house and flying into peoples’ yawns all this week. And it’s not a nice one. It’s a crazy one. I mean, who decides to spend Government revenue on a project to control the minds of insects? SETTING INSECTS LOOSE WITH A MISSION?
As I sit here typing this, a moth crawls up and down my window, watching me work. It can see everything I’m doing. Is it malevolent? Is it American? It just flew at my face! Is it an attack-bot? This could go on for hours.
Iraq death toll tops 1 million
Guest post from my greenest leftist friend, who doesn’t have his own blog and wants only to be known as Jason
Somehow the Australian MSM managed to miss a story last week that Iraq’s death toll now tops 1 million.
Ah well, good thing we got rid of that murderous Saddam Hussein, eh?
This article sums it up pretty well:
If we’re not enraged, let’s ask ourselves why. Is it because the slaughter of Iraqi’s is happening thousands of miles away? Is it because they are not like us in appearance or religion? Would we, say, feel the loss of British or Irish people more intensely? We Americans are upset about the loss of lives of American soldiers. When we’re not shopping at the mall or watching Sunday football, we’re concerned about this. But the death of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of Iraqi’s? We don’t feel that. We don’t imagine what it looks like. Our politicians don’t convey the terrible weight of what we’ve done to that country. Perhaps there is something to be angry about. Very angry.
Reporters Without Stories hoax the SMH
A bard of truth has posted a piece on the SMH entitled Lips are flapping but no words come out”, which appears to document the complete lack of news coming out of APEC. Pretty sure it didn’t make the print edition, but anything’s possible in a city gone mad. Doubtless the piece shall be removed forthwith by some editor, so I shall reproduce it in its entirety after the leap.
Kevin07: campaigning for the new age
The Kevin07 site now has this section devoted to Kevin Rudd video fan fic sent in by what a friend of mine calls “passionate citizens”. Alot of it’s pretty scary, as you’d imagine.
A friend of mine and his band have also submitted their premiere video clip to the site, which I’ve posted for the wary after the jump. It’s entitled “Titty Bar”. Somehow, I doubt it will be posted. This is what democracy looks like.