just when you least expect it, Xanana Gusmão is back

[Electoral workers, Dili. East Timor General Election, 12 May 2018. Photo: Reuters/Lirio Da Fonseca]

Comrades.

Only last week I was writing about the worrying renewed rise of the old Strongman in South-East Asia, after 92-year-old Mahathir Mohamad, won the general election in Malaysia, after 15 years out of the game.
Well, now it's happened again, in a place dear to my heart, East Timor.
Just when you least expect it, Xanana Gusmão is back.
After the weekend's exercise in the Miracle of Democracy [and the election has, btw, been declared "free & fair" by the international observers], 73-year-old Gusmão has been swept back into power, again, after he vowed never to return to politics after stints as both President and Prime Minister.
There is absolutely no doubting Gusmão's credentials as a genuine bona-fide Independence war hero, but he's come to power this time on the back of being the lead negotiator in getting back East Timor's oil and gas fields, that were shamefully and outrageously thieved off them by the Timor Gap Treaty [for which Gareth Evans, despite his excellent Pinko record, will never be forgiven].
They were well and truly rat-fucked there, and it's taken 29 years to sort out and achieve justice.
But, the Greater Sunrise fields are now a stranded asset if ever there was one, and with Timor Leste predicted to run out of their current oil & gas reserves well inside ten years, there's trouble ahead.
The arse has fallen right out of the fossil fuel market as the world turns to renewables, Woodside and ConcoPhillips are very hard bastards indeed, and as long as Gusmão insists on the pipeline to run the very doubtful "Rivers of Gold" to the remote south coast of Timor, instead of Darwin, the resource will never be exploited.
Ever.
That's the harsh reality, mate.
In a cruel twist of fate, the opportunity is gone.
It's probably as worthless as the paper it's written on.
After pointing out a photograph of Gusmão returning in triumph from New York to Dili with the new border treaty in hand to get straight on the campaign trail, the Good Lady Wife was moved to remark "sheesh, Xanana's looking a bit old and fat these days".

[CNRT leader, Xanana Gusmão, March 2018, Dili. Photo: Associated Press.]

The Miracle of Democracy in East Timor is in a rut, with the two main factions of the old Independence fighters, warlords if you like, still fighting each other, after a pretend kiss and make up.
Still?
The 68-year-old now twice former Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri, the long time leader of Fretilin, is out of office after less than ten months - being snookered from all sides in Parliament forcing President Lú-Olo to call an early election - and will probably be run out of town.
The election was won by Aliança Mudança ba Progresso (Change for Progress Alliance, or AMP) who could rule in their own right, without the need of the support of fringe parties like the Democratic Development Front [FDD], a coalition of various splinter groups.
But, AMP is itself a three-way coalition led by majority partner, Gusmão’s National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction [CNRT], along with yet another former President Taur Matan Ruak’s Popular Liberation Party [PLP], and the Kmanek Haburas Unidade Nasional Timor Oan {KHUNTO].
Fretilin was routed at the polls, but far from disgraced. The third corner of the infernal triangle is, if course, another former President and PM and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 68-year-old José Ramos-Horta, [who I have an enormous amount of time for and I've been honoured to shake his hand], who has sensibly long since left the political landscape to work in world diplomacy as a special envoy-at-large, burdened with always being a peace-maker.
After surviving a serious assassination attempt, José won't be tempted into making a comeback.
KHUNTO is a "youth movement" which has its roots in a Dili martial arts gang of all things, that decided in get into the Democracy caper five years ago, and last time around, they unexpectedly won five seats.
But being a somewhat anarchic mob, they don't appear to have any leaders of note, and I have no idea what their policy platform is, that's if they have a practical one.
Timor's hopes rest in young leaders, but where are they, with old-guard revolutionaries still running the show?

[KHUNTO campaign rally, Dili. Photo: Meredith Weiss.]


Old Mate Alkatiri is between a rock and a hard place, as a Muslim he's always been an outsider in a country wholly dominated by Roman Catholicism, and his idea of negotiation is "my .44 is gonna do the talkin', from now on", so even Fretilin's pull on it's own storied heritage was not much good to them at the polls, even though they still enjoy wide support - but just not enough.
As the hopeless imbroglio of the last ten months proved, it turned out Fretilin couldn't run a chook raffle, let alone get supply bills through a hung Parliament.
Alkatiri will likely now be banished again to the tiny exclave of Oecusse, where he was previously sidelined with the grand informal title of "The King of Oecusse"...out of sight and out of mind...
The poor bloke reportedly wept at the news of the election result, knowing it's probably now the end of the road for Fretilin, maybe not yet electorally, but in historical terms at least. I remember hearing Ramos-Horta being interviewed in 2012 just before I visited East Timor, and he was asked what the top priorities were for Timor Leste, and he replied with two words "education, roads".
He then explained if you don't have the money to educate your young folk, slipping into eternal grinding poverty is inevitable, and the Portuguese and Indonesians did absolutely nothing to improve communications, and without roads there's no economy, beyond subsistence farming.
[Anyone who's been up into the coffee country and then on into the strange haunting mountains around Ermera, will tell you of the legendary wash-aways and pot-holes up there that are big enough to swallow up a 4WD, whole. The Indonesians re-built Baucau Airport 120 km east of Dili at enormous expense as a military airbase, and there were grand plans for it to be turned into an international tourist hub after Independence, but the road to Dili was never completely sealed, and the joint now lies abandoned in ruins].

Most people under 50 would have little, if any, memory or experience of the Indonesian invasion, and anyone under 25 would not even really remember the Civil War of '99, let alone living under Indonesian occupation -- and the under-25's now make up more than 60% of the population - time to move on?
It's easy to be pessimistic about East Timor's future, but they are a wonderful people, and an incredibly resilient, if hopelessly politically fractured society...but, for mine, the way forward is only possible if they start to let go of their past.

[Fretilin campaign rally, Dili. Photo: EPA]

Election Special!

Comrades,

God, it must be good when yr the Govt. and you suddenly find a shit-load of extra shekels in the coffers that you didn't know you had so you can work up an absolutely you-bewt number-one rip-snorter of an Election Special on the "she'll be right, Jack" principal.
Woot!
It's the best in years, with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, The Lord ScoMo, in a cracking mood, throwing cash at everything and everyone like it's confetti; why not pork barrel anything you can find with a vote in it to save yr own political skin?
Pensions up! Taxes down! Free money galore! Cheap craft beer! Manna from heaven! Anything.
Promise everything to everyone...it's a well-worn time-honoured winner.
No mention of stagnant wage growth, the spectre of deflation, woeful welfare, global warming, crumbling cities, or a myriad of other such inconsequential matters.
Nope.
And of course the whole shebang was kicked off with no need to raise the Medicare Levy, as Canberra is now so awash with moolah, the crippled can just toddle off and suit themselves.
It's impossible to know where to start on this absolute corker, so why not with a bit of sweet political bastardry?
The Tories must just love to death the "up you for the rent!" stripping $84M out of the ABC's $1.1B budget over three years, as everyone knows the National Broadcaster is infested with Commo's from top to bottom, there's Pinko's at every microphone, and you'll find plenty of Reds under the Beds in the sheltered workshop, all drawing massively bloated stipends.
Oh well, video killed the radio star and as Michelle Guthrie keeps on harping on about "appointment television for the under 60's is dead", so sometime very soon you'll be only able to get Aunty streamed to yr Dumb Phone anyway.
Doesn't matter, there are only so many votes in public broadcasting with the vast majority of electorate happy enough with food-porn like My Kitchen Rules.
The Special Broadcasting Service has an entire channel devoted to it.
In the "jobs and growth" sector, the Govt. is employing more spooks down at ASIO and there will be a need for more Federal Cops if the powers-that-be are to be successful in their plan to "raise $3.6bn over four years through a crackdown on illicit tobacco."
Good luck!
That's a helluva lot of chop-chop.
No mention, of course, of the medagwindfall that would flow in taxes from a well-regulated recreational cannabis industry, oh no siree.
Take it out of the hands of organised crime, and put it towards building hospitals, schools, and roads'n'shit, nah, that would just be way too sensible for any politician worth their salt to consider.
Allow me to mount one of my other personal hobby horses here; there are no votes in foreign aid, so who cares if it's at an all time low...but it's pleasing to see a few hundred extra mill extra going to our cousins in the South Pacific, but that's only a knee-jerk reaction to the Santo wharf in Vanuatu beat-up, it's all about the perception of growing Chinese influence next door, in other words, fear and loathing of the Yellow Peril.

Speaking of Yellow Peril, while the Lord ScoMo and Mr. Trundle were trumpeting the Election Special Budget, the learned judges of the full-bench of the High Court [sitting as the Court of Disputed Returns] were quietly handing down yet another judgement in the s.44 imbroglio.
As everyone knows, the Founding Father's were playing the race card with that one, absolutely determined to keep any feelthy foreigners out of the Corridors of Power, and the High Court still agrees, absolutely, taking an extremely narrow and technical view of the section of the Constitution at hand.
Katy Gallagher, Senator for the Australian Capital Territory, did not meet the "take all reasonable steps" test to renounce her inherited Britarse citizenship, even though she could produce a credit card statement saying she had paid the Poms to let her go, but the Home Office decided to take their time and didn't formally register her 'renunciation' until after the 2016 election.
Near enough is not good enough for the High Court, so four other MP's followed her out the door, and the good burghers of Perth [Tim Hammond resigned last week because of work/life balance issues, but that's by-the-by], Fremantle, Longman, Mayo, and Braddon all now go to by-elections to stir things up before the next general election, which constitutionally, must be held no sooner than 4 August 2018 and no later than 18 May 2019.
And won't everybody be sad to see the back of the politician with the best example of nominative-determinism...Rebekha Sharkie!?
And you can be as sure as hell that there will be no referendum put to the people at the next poll to amend s.44 to keep the dual-citizens in, as there are two chances of that getting up by a majority of the popular vote and in a majority of the states - None and Buckley's.
Said it before, say it again...let's face it, we're racist to the bootstraps - yr either Strayan, or yr not.
End of story.

Cripes, it's been a busy week for the the Miracle of Democracy.
Only this morning has news filtered through that 92-year-old Mahathir Mohammad has been swept back into power in Malaysia.
After the previous Govt. was ripped apart by corruption scandal after corruption scandal, the Malaysian electorate were obviously looking for a tried and tested Big Man to come out of retirement and lead the way, and, boy, hasn't he got some form in that department?
You've got to remember that Mahathir don't like the White Man [you'll remember he called us bullies, and worse, and Paul Keating called him a 'recalcitrant'], this was the dude who hung Barlow and Chambers back in '86, and he locked up his main political rival on trumped-up charges of buggery, not once, but twice.
But in a most curious state of affairs, Mahathir has now forgiven that very same sodomite, Anwar Ibrahim, promising to spring him from the jail house, and then make him Deputy Prime Minister!
Excuse me, but what the fark is going on there?
Clearly the Malays have gone down the populist route, electing an old leader in charge of a new party, and soon enough they will wind up with "authoritarian democracy" just like back in the good old days, as more and more of the region falls back into the hands of the traditional "Strongman" - that's just the way the game's always been played in those parts
Nothing to see there, situation normal.

inspecting the natives...

I note that President Macron didn't say désolé or regrettant let alone chagriné at Ouvéa.
He just had a bit of a poke around under heavy security, had a quick lookie at the graves, laid a wreath or two, and planted a coconut tree.
Thought it was a bit cheeky of him to bring along the original of the 1853 document annexing New Cal to France to be lodged in the White Man's Museum in Noumea.
"The gesture was supposed to symbolise the final chapter in the period of colonisation", even though Macron, while professing no particular view on whether people should vote "Yes or "No' in the indepedence referendum, then went on to say "France would not be the same without Nouvelle-Calédonie".

In any case, this picture of him on Ouvéa makes him look like some kind of Gallic version of King Charles the Turd inspecting the natives...

Photo: AFP.

Kanaky pour la Kanak!

Photo: Ile Ouvéa, Nouvelle-Calédonie, April 2018/AFP.


Comrades,

I note that the wildly popularly elected President of the Republic of France, Emmanuel Macron, has embarked on a Tour du Monde.
And who can blame him trying to escape that stinking old dump Paris, where he's not that extremely popular at all at the minute, almost exactly a year after his extraordinary landslide victory in the Presidential election.
The natives are restless, as usual.
He's got the workers offside with his proposed labour law reforms - they're just not having it, never will - with the most militant union, the train drivers leading the way with mass anti-Macron rallies and pulling the loco's off the tracks, and bomb throwing students from the most prestigious lycée chucking Molotov cocktails at the riot cops
Macron's probably thinking that generations of French President's have tried and failed with the labour laws, and what day of the week is there when there isn't a violent demo somewhere in Paris?
So, he pops on over to D.C. to see the DJ!
A State Visit, including a State Dinner of course, no less.
It's customary for French President's to be offered a State Dinner in any new US Presidency [you know, the Statue of Liberty thing and all that], and even though the Trumpotus is the first in a century not to hold an official chow-down in his first year in office, Macron could hardly refuse, could he?
Not with a goat's cheese gateau, with tomato jam, buttermilk biscuit crumbles and young variegated lettuces, followed by a rack of spring lamb with Carolina gold rice jambalaya and burnt cipollini soubise, with nectarine tart and crème fraîche ice cream to finish, served on the "Clinton China", accompanied by vintage Chardonnay and Pinot Noir from Oregon and a Napa Valley demi-sec crémant sparkler for desert and the after dinner entertainment provided by the Washington National Opera.
The pundits say Macron was in town to try and cut a new deal on a keeping the Iran contra-deal alive...no nukes, no sanctions...nothing went down there...shit happens.
But the pair do certainly make an odd couple; a suave, highly educated and sophisticated 40-year-old Frenchman embracing a 71-year-old crass vainglorious ignoramus, but really, Macron was just there to play The Donald like a harp.
Never mind that DJ! was trying to brush some typically French dandruff off Emmanuel's immaculate shoulder - Trumpy was just trying to help.
Then he took his peculiar accent of fluent English to Congress, and later told people that the wildly oscillating flip-flopping completely-hopeless foreign policy being pursued by Le Imbecile was "insane" and "ridiculous", cleverly parroting Trump's own words, as he departed.
The Kid President reckons it was a good first stop as he tries to position himself as the new Leader of The Free World, now that Pax Americana is dead, buried & cremated.
There's no election for it of course, just a matter of grabbing enormous power by both hands when you see it.

Macron is due in Australie next week [May 1-3], for another State Visit, so he will do the required pleasantries with the assorted grandees & dignitaries around Canberra, but you'd reckon he'd also want to have a little lookie at how the $US50B project to supply the RAN with short-fin barracuda submarines [or whatever they're called] is getting along.
His scientists and engineers have worked the things out, but gawd help 'em trying to communicate the idea to Adelaide shipbuilders - who've been accused in the past of not being able to be trusted to "build a canoe" - given the management of the 25 year program is apparently "incredibly dense", according to the submersibles folk in Cherbourg who've got the contract.
They'd rather build them there, but that's a very long time to sort out any bugs, and tack on enormously expensive "variations" and over-runs.
Politics? Bah-humbug.
They can even nuclear-arm these subs if you want.

Then the President drops in to say bonjour and wave a happy wave in the colony of Nouvelle-Calédonie, another place close to my heart with a long-running independence insurgency.
Macron is making a very brave step indeed by going on May 5 to Ouvéa - an island way out there in the remote Loyalty Islands north of the Grande Terre - to mark the 30th anniversary of the killing of 19 militant Kanaks that prompted the signing of the outrageous 1988 Matignon Accords a few months later [a one-sided peace deal if ever there was one - dangle the carrot of promised independence sometime down the track as Paris's leisure while continuing to screw over the original inhabitants].
There were widespread claims that the gendarmerie murdered execution-style some of the insurgents of the Kanak and Socialist Liberation Movement in Ouvéa after they had released their hostages and given up, in an act of utter utter French bastardry that's still a weeping sore to this day.
It was a very tawdry affair all 'round with 25 people from both sides dead.
Why is he going?
Apparently, he wants to see the graves.
Is Macron going to say "sorry"?
Surely, Non?

Three decades on, and there are still fringes of armed extremists in both the pro and anti-independence camps who won't have anything to do with each other except down the barrel of a gun, and Manuel Valls - a former PM under Hollande - has been in Noumea for weeks now trying to get the two sides who occupy the the middle ground talking, without much success, because they're both hopelessly splintered.
The fact that the journey has taken 30 tortuous years - 30 years! - to get to a binding independence vote, le référendum sur l'indépendance, which has now been set in stone for Nov. 4 this year, is simply astonishing.
He wants to cast himself as a peacemaker - The Kid President does not want to be seen interfering with the referendum in any way, [apart from this casual goodwill tour, of course] - but that's only because he knows well enough it's very likely to be a NO vote...a "stay in France" result.
I went to Noumea five years ago, and the Kanaks had occupied a small corner of central park Place des Cocotiers and built a stockade-like fence around the patch with pointed sharp poles, and were protest marching down the main drag every day for independence, but I saw more French flags flying in Noumea than I have ever seen anywhere else in the world, even in France itself.
They might as well hang THIS IS FRANCE! banners from the ornate art deco balconies, and probably will.
And there's yr dichotomy.
With the electorate roughly split between those who identify as Kanak or other South Sea Islander, and those who are European, and very largely French by descendance - and where French is the lingua franca - it's expected the status quo will remain by a fair majority after the vote; to have their Deputies and Senators in Paris left alone, and hope to continue to keep the Kanaks quiet with desultory hand-outs while ripping their nickel out of the ground as fast they possibly can.
Unlike every other French colony, from Africa to Indo-China, that were just given up as a bad loss, the French really still want New Caledonia; bugger the locals, it's a huge tract of real estate and the original colonists came from prison stock and Frenchmen who were sent there in exile - in other words crims and cowboys, the detested Caldoche - and to this day robber land barons and horses and beef cattle range far and wide over the 400km long island, while the Kanaks live in poverty-stricken villages.
The last colony the Frogs begrudgingly gave up, along with the Poms, was the Condominium of the New Hebrides [now Vanuatu], in 1980, so little wonder the bureaucrats in Paris - almost 17,000 kms from Noumea - have spent all that time throwing their hands in the air crying "le problème est beaucoup trop difficile".
The local Kanaks don't want Macron in Ouvéa; he's a symbol of conquering domination, a modern-day Napoleon, and that's not the way the Melanesian's operate.
If the referendum goes against independence, nothing will change and the UN will really start to lose their shit and run out of patience and immediately put it back on the drawing board as they are fed up to here with colonialism in this day and age, and who isn't?
Amid the shouts of "vive la France", I'm entirely sure that Pres. Macron will also hear the battle cry "Kanaky pour la Kanak! Kanaky pour la Kanak! Kanaky pour la Kanak!"

Photo: Ludovic Marin/AFP

"Putin may have ties to Russia" - report

Comrades,

The murky worlds of International Diplomacy and the Miracle of Democracy rarely collide, but when K-Pop proved to be an overnight smash-hit sensation in Pyongyang, there's populism right there.
I'm voting for Red Velvet, the most popular all-girl band in all of South Korea at the minute - who would win the Eurovision Song Contest in a canter, if they were allowed in.
They were among the 120 strong troupe of performers and 70 roadies who made the 'soft diplomacy' tour; the South even sent 68-year-old crooner Cho Yong-pil to belt out his classic "Dear Friend" and the 61-year-old 'balladeer' Choi Jin-hee to crank up a rendition of one of Fat Boy's father's favourites "Maze of Love".
Fatboy himself was seen bopping along with the best of them as he took front and centre in a private box at the magnificently ornate post-Stalinist 1,500-seat East Pyongyang Grand Theater [which was nationally televised - of course], before the South Korean artistes went around again a couple of days later for 12,000 of the party faithful at the Ryugyong Jong Ju Yong Gymnasium.

Of course "Little Bomb Man" doesn't have any particular gripe with the South, evinced by the fact that he his due to have a face-to-face chit-chat with South Korean Presdt. Moon in the DMZ on 27 April.
He just hates America with a passion that knows no bounds, and is now taking full advantage of the chaotic chronic dysfunction in the White House to push his own wheelbarrow.
And everybody knows He's Got The Bomb in his push-cart.
Rapprochement, however, continues on unabated, as Fat Boy also felt obliged to drop in on his major sponsors in Beijing to make tribute, and didn't Pres. Mr Ping of China roll out the exceedingly long red carpet for him?.
Kim Jnr Jnr travelled in the famous British Racing Green Train which has been used by the Kim family dynasty for decades [and probably still runs behind a thumping great steam locomotive].and it was by all reports a very slow train to China indeed, with all that armour-plating on the carriages - 21 cars in total in the set - that travelled the roughly 1,100 km from Pyongyang to Beijing, and there are plenty of tracks going this way and that, so nobody is entirely sure which route the lavishly appointed choo-choo took, except for the Chinese signallers, and they aint talkin'.
They can hear the whistle blowin'.
One of the carriages was reported to be filled entirely with wine.
Now this is a good move as the Chinese are just mad for red, very good red, particularly Bordeaux, so the container car was likely stacked to the brim with cases of Château Lafite Rothschild and a bit of Vintage Champagne Krug as fruit for the sideboard, as French winemakers deny any knowledge of international trade sanctions and are not at all fussy about who they sell their booze to - there is no bargaining, just pay up front, in cash, preferably in Francs.
Fatboy would never in his wildest dreams consider getting on a little airplane to go anywhere [up until this point he hadn't left North Korea for seven years].
As soon as it departed North Korean airspace a guided missile could loom up out of no-where and poof! he turns into a an exploding fireball of flaming wreckage never to be seen again.
He's smarter than that and he's not having it, and he certainly won't be turning up in Washington DC in the foreseeable future, so The Donald will just have to lose face and go to China - again - where the POTUS is currently on the nose.
Mmm... The DJ! could be caught between a rock and a hard place there if he wants to go half way around the world to hook up with Kim.

meantime, it's been all fun and games over in Moscow, since that most unfortunate incident in Salisbury, involving a hitherto unknown minor double-agent by the name of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who got caught up as collateral damage.
Just to remind you, here's Ol' Skrippers - as he's known in British intelligence circles - and his offspring in happier times.

The KGB has form the length of yr arm when it comes to sneaky poisonings - it's their signature calling card - unlike Mossad, who prefer strangulation.
And this Novichok gear is an absolute ripper if you seriously want to dispatch yr enemies as it produces "involuntary contraction of all skeletal muscles that leads to respiratory and cardiac arrest and finally death from heart failure or suffocation as copious fluid secretions fill the victims' lungs".
Ouch.
I see that My Mate Vlad has for the first time come out via his Ambassador at the UN and publicly claimed what he's been telling the Russian populace all along in the lead up to his "re-election"..."This is crazy. We are accused of doing it? Nonsense. In the week before my Presidential Election? Impossible. It was a botched job! We don't do failure. It was MI5 who did it. They're bloody hopeless if they want the world to believe that I am the bad dude in this one. Nichto to do with me".
The Kremlin double-crosses the double-agent, eh, Putes?
Cute.
Regulation diplomatic expulsions are par for the course in such times.
Crikey, even Australia as a token in the game, chucked out two "Russian spies" and Our Julie Bishop said in a doorstop interview that "Russia has not been playing by the rules" - this in the same week as the Australian cricket team had been caught "not playing by the rules".
That is a touch harsh, as the recently former and current Australian XI does not contain any well-trained killers in the poisoning caper as far as I am aware.
In any case, word is that the only thing that the Canberra Diplomatic Corps wanted to chin-wag to Ms Bishop about over cocktails at the time was, you guessed it - the cricket - so I suppose you could put that down in the book as a "diplomatic incident" as well.

Gee, I almost forgot to explain why the Trumpotus' name is stinking mud in Peking at the minute.
It's because the Deranged American is in the middle of kicking off a Trade War with China.
He's not listening.
He never listens, so he never learns, that is if he is capable of learning, having never read a book.
The learned White House advisers might as well be invisible ghosts in the walls.
The carrot-topped loose cannon does not know that age old maxim that goes way back to the First Opium War [1839-42] that "no-one wins in a Trade War".
They had to have a Second Opium War to sort it out, as the outcome of stoush No.1, a peace treaty, left no-one satisfied.
There are a million ways to start a war, but only two ways to finish one - annihilate your enemy, or take all yr chips to the bargaining table at the Peace Conference.
Put in simple terms, the American economy will finish up in tatters and it will all end in tears.
The Chinese hold the whip hand here as they'll just flood the world with their excess produce at near or below cost-price, and all those economies will then go belly up as folks rush out to grab the super-cheap Chinese goods sending local companies to the wall, forget wage growth - all the jobs disappear - and financial markets go into nuclear melt-down GFC-style, and hello here comes a depression or something similarly appalling.
You know it makes sense.
Good luck with picking the next Boom Time.
Never mind the stupendous Mexico Wall insanity or the foolhardy idea of sending in the Texas National Guard with big shooters to keep the brown scum out, if any further evidence is required that The Donald is as mad as a cut snake, then surely, this must be it.

[China Daily/Li Feng]

fallen windmills, quinoa & frozen pike

Comrades,

Crikey! It was a busy weekend for the Miracle of Democracy...

[Photo: Nina Zontina/Sputnik. Voters in Sochi, Russia, 18 March 2018.]


I note that My Mate Vlad has been returned for his fourth stint as President of the Russian Federation.
Wildly popular among the middle class he created, by all reports.
Who knows what the proletariat is thinking?
Backed him in with something like 77% of the popular vote by some accounts, but the powers-that-be in Russia are not generally fond of Electoral Commission's, or nuisances like that, so it's hard for the amateur psephologist to get any handle on the exact numbers that actually count.
It goes without saying that with the genuine Opposition out of the race after boycotting the poll in protest over a fraudulent bribery conviction of their leader, the Communist Party candidate was the only real alternative [and he died in the neck with the voters], and despite eight candidates on the ballot paper, Putes was a lay-down misere in this one, so there wasn't much need for vote rigging, as the election had already been rigged.
There didn't seem to be any argument about that.
There were reported cases of "ballot stuffing" - that's always a good one.
If enough people don't bother to show up, electoral officials just sternly fill out all the blank ballot papers for the authorities and stuff the ballot boxes with them, safe in the knowledge that no-one will be any the wiser.
Winner!
The only reality about the whole exercise was the turnout, but that's a State Secret, as are the number of spoiled ballots, that would have been binned anyway.
There were some legitimate concerns that folk would not roll up, blaming the unseasonably cold spring weather, but Putes had an answer to that...he adopted Abe Lincoln's old tactic of offering free booze at the polling stations, with barrels of Govt. made and authorised vodka being rolled out across the nation so people had the opportunity to raise a glass and toast "tvajó zdaróvye!!" to their Great and Glorious Leader.
And not happy with just grog, it was reported that on Russia’s Pacific coast, local officials delivered fresh eggs, tinned peas, and frozen pike to polling stations, to be sold at a 30% discount on retail.
Brilliant! Go shopping on the cheap while you vote and have a drink.
Who's going to argue with that?
Nikolai Kretsu, who's known around those parts as the Chairman of the Consumer Market Committee, was quoted as saying "we think by doing this we can increase turnout” and "the second objective is to strengthen allegiance towards the authorities.”
Too right mate, and too honest for yr own good.
Never mind being a dab hand with a light touch of nerve agent, if Vlad the Impaler doesn't do a Mr Jinping, and is still term limited in 2024, he already would have been effectively running the show for nigh on a quarter century anyway.
Talk about the quintessential autocrat.

[Photo: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP. Vladimir Putin celebrating the fourth anniversary of Russia's annexation of Crimea, Manezhnaya Square, Moscow, 18 March 2018.]

[Photo: Steven S. Marshall caught looking rather shady at an un-dated press conference in Adelaide.]

Meantime, over in the Free Colonies, you've gotta love the South Australian Liberal Country League Cartel, who think they were born to rule, if anyone was.
Steven S. Marshall - a former furniture salesman and wool broker - ironically represents the good burghers of the electorate of Dunstan [formerly Norwood]...he of the Pink hotpants, Our Don, on course, would be revolving in his poor shallow grave knowing that a Tory is representing the seat he famously nicked off the arch-conservatives, and is now named in his honour.
Mortified, he would be.
There was some of the usual hanky-panky going down with the Pinko's apparently forced to make something like 40,000 robocalls through the reverse phonebook, and send a few thousand texts in the days before the election reminding old folk that not only do they have the right to vote, but that they are obliged to vote, after the Tories spread a scurrilous and fictitious rumour that Senior Citizens were exempt from the ballot.
That hoary old chestnut - spreading postal vote forms in nursing homes has long been a Pinko ploy on the campaign trail - but now it's same, same, only different; just run a 'don't vote' scam on the platform favoured by the elderly, Facebook, and watch it take off.
Uncle Jay looked like the heavy burden of power had been lifted from his shoulders while conceding defeat with an excellent punting analogy "like a four-time Melbourne Cup winner, who the handicapper has finally caught up with - on this occasion".
The handicapper being the Surveyor-General or whoever drew up the "radical redistribution" which effectively made four solid working-class seats very marginal, so the odds were indeed stacked against him, and the L.C.L jumped at their chance.
Lets face it, Labor did preside over closing a car factory or two, a submarine base that according to a former Tory Defence Minister "couldn't build a canoe", and a whole lot of windmills falling over in a 'once in 100 year storm' and frying the electricity grid to buggery.
But what could have been 20 years in power is a long long time, and nobody has a mortgage on the Miracle of Democracy.
The Pinko's just lost the popular vote.
Croweaters' opted for change for change's sake, surely confident that not much will actually change in the Rust Belt, apart from schools and hospitals and the like going down the S-bend us usual.
And it wasn't as if the Lefties were "swept from power" in a landslide or anything, it was more like a "brave, honourable defeat" given the near-impossible task.
Apart from being redistributed out of it - in the end, it was the "incumbency problem", plain and simple.
In a scary unstable world, the punters left their Protest Votes at home, and went with self-interest and stability, as everyone knows what a minority Govt. looks like - just ask Julia Gillard, she'll tell you.
It was most pleasing to see that complete & utter freak of nature, Corey Berandi, go entirely nowhere, while that show-pony Nick the Greek is now also a goner, a spent political force.
There is no way back for Xenophon, as South Australia polarised - scared to death of the unknown - left to the left and right to the right, thanks, leaving no middle ground to contest, and sensibly the wily bastard won't have yet another lash at the Senate as his comrades in the Nat Cap are splintering like Mintaro slate, and there's simply no point beating yr head against a limestone wall, anymore.
He's had his day in the sun, and is now very tanned.
So Nick goes from wannabe power-broker and king-maker to schmuck, and will just have to return to "no win, no fee" lawyering to earn a crust, as even his handsome Parliamentary pension from Canberra is unlikely to keep him in the manner to which he is accustomed.
It's everyone for themselves on that part of the island, I'm afraid.

[Photo: Stanley Hammond 1979 Bronze [detail] of John Batman, co-founder of Melbourne - "a rogue, thief, cheat and liar, a murderer of blacks and the vilest man I have ever known".Formerly located in Collins St, Melbourne, currently in storage.]


It was heartwarming for an Old Red to see the Pinko's and common sense triumph in the Batman by-election, where they were the under-dogs to end all under-dogs...but it was a classic example of a very old adage..."all politics is local".
Global warming be buggered, folk in inner-suburban Melbourne [where there's long been "four seasons in one day"] could not give a blue root about a "stranded asset" that is highly unlikely to ever become some Indian coal mine in outback QLD more than two-and-a-half thousand kilometres away as the crow flies.
Reffo's? Nah, no votes in them.
The Greens did themselves no favours at all by fielding a perennial loser, a very ordinary party hack who has now contested the seat SIX times and lost [although she still has a very long way to go to beat Screaming Lord Sutch of the Monster Raving Loony Party who still holds the world record for the most number of contested elections lost].
The tofu hanging off the Hipster Proof Fence along yr Bell St there did not turn Green with mold, and the tree-huggers' candidate was also dogged by vindictive bickering in her own party and was blatantly and very publicly accused of being a bully and an all-round not nice person.
Now that's not white-anting, that's eating the whole house.
In stark contrast, the Pinko's had the sense to run an actual real worker [a former nurse], with enough political nous to rise to the top of the Australian Nursing Federation and then follow the RJ Hawke route through the ACTU.
She knows a thing or two about organising - don't you worry about that - and reportedly worked very hard at retail politics.
If she personally didn't knock on every door in Batman, one of her envoys did.
The Labor vote actually increased south of the Quinoa Corridor as the Greens were deserted in droves by the Millennials - so there's hope for them yet.
While the Hon. Bob Brown down on his little farm in Tassy is consumed by incandescent rage at the wrecking of his noble intentions party by ignorant fools, the un-reformed Trots are way up shit creek without a paddle, after a disastrous election in the Apple Isle, losing big-time ground in SA, failing to secure a certain win in Batman, and are now being wholly consumed by their own long-running internal backstabbing - ask Lee Rhiannon, she'll tell you.
The way they're going, it's likely to all end in tears and go the same way as the Australian Democrats.
Remember them?
The Greens, of course, just blame shady preference deals and everything else under the sun, so instead of putting it on everyone but himself, the only decent and honourable thing for Dr Dick Di Natale to do is to fall on his sword and go back to pushing pills for a living, or going off-grid to navel gaze in an isolated rustically trendy log cabin on a freezing cold Victorian mountainside, never to be heard of again.
The Tories couldn't even be bothered running a candidate.

Solidarity forever.

the first-rate quality of the South Australian electorate

Comrades.

The first-rate quality of the electorate in South Australia has never ceased to impress me mightily and is beyond reproach.
This specimen, patiently waiting in the queue to cast his ballot, has got the message of the Miracle of Democracy - they all count, it don't matter who you are - one vote, one value.

So help me, God.


Photo: ShitAdelaide/Instagram

the SR-28 Sarmat Super Heavy comin' at ya

Comrades,

The idea of them damned Ruskies bombing the living bejesus out of the US of A has been around for a very long time now.
The above diagram drawn and published in October 1953 shows how sneaky bombers could come out of Nowheresville in the Arctic and drop The Big One, and there would only be seven hours warning that American cities were about to be turned to cinders.
So it didn't really come as any surprise that My Mate Vlad went fully thermonuclear in his State of the Russian Federation address this week past.
Putin's annual speech before the party faithful is usually done in some ornate hall in the Kremlin and takes hours to get through, with all the stats on tractor production and state-sanctioned vodka quotas etc etc et al, but not this time.
Oh no.
He needed a large conference centre with all the latest audio-visual equipment to show off the capabilities of the SR-28 Sarmat Super Heavy, which is code named "Satan" in NATO military intelligence circles.
Now this is one helluva muthfukka - if you believe all the hype and bluffing - as it's apparently able to carry a payload of up to 200 tonnes to any square inch on the face of this earth without being detected by any up-to-date modern defence technology.
So the thing would be on you before you knew it.
Bang!
It might even have Fractional Orbital Bombardment capabilities, in plain and simple terms, the monster could, in theory, get up into a low-earth orbit, then drop out of orbit, and deliver it's payload, and could even come at the Americans from the South Fuckin' Pole.
That of course that would be in contravention of SALT II [Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty, 1979], which explicitly bans ballistic missiles that can go the FOB.
That said, 200 tonnes is astonishing for a single rocket, and of course would translate into many many many megatons of thermonuclear weaponry spread over whatever territory you like.
As foreshadowed on this bloggy-blog-blog a while back, the Yanks have long suspected the Ruskies have been flouting with the 30-year-old Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty [INF] which effectively bans the use or development of any nuclear missile that travels between 500 and 5,500 kilometres.
Suspect no more, complete with a whiz-bang slide-show, the Great and Glorious Russian Leader has come out and positively flaunted his capability of entirely ignoring the treaty, as the Sarmat Heavy can puportedly go anywhere on the planet, and he was also talking up all sorts of new cruise missiles and "underwater drones" [read: torpedo's] in development that are all capable of carrying The Bomb.
Of course the show of force is all about Vlad facing "re-election" for the Presidency in the Russian's own curious version of the Miracle of Democracy, as by all reports - with no real opposition candidates - he's having tons of trouble getting out the vote.
He really needs to whip up some patriotic fervor before the first-round [and very likely only] poll on March 18.
The only way the Russians can express their displeasure at the way the country is being run is by not turning up at the polls, but even then, non-attendance would be most likely noted by the Secret Police, especially if it was known that you had been trash-talking The Pres. over yr own dinner table.
Putin, who of course is an old KGB hand, desperately needs a decent sized turn-out to legitimise his own despotism
If you didn't believe me that a new nuclear arms race is now well and truly on, doubt no more that "a hard rain's gonna fall" when the Nuclear Winter arrives to finish us off.
Of course, DJ Trump! has no idea how to respond this blatant talking up of The Big One, other than some vague promise to build a Bigger and Better and more Beautiful Big Nuclear Button on the Oval Office desk.

In the meantime - blinked and you would have missed it on most western news services - in the wake of the frozen Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, dignitaries and envoys from South Korea have in the past few days nipped across the Korean DMZ and lobbed in Pyongyang for a bit of face-to-face chit-chat with Fatboy Kim himself.
Nothing much has come out about exactly what was discussed - but you can be sure it wasn't just the time of day - apart from Fatboy viewing favourably the possibility of President Moon of the South making an official State Visit to the North at a date to be fixed.
The sticking point, of course, will be the South Korean pre-condition that the North announce a permanent suspension of all nuclear weapons testing, before such a tour could go ahead.
If they pull that off, then they could really get down to tin tacks
If nothing else, it shows that the Fat Boy is at least willing and able to come to the negotiating table, and he's even mouthed some platitudes about going down in the little history books as the man who led the Great Reunification of Korea and achieved lasting peace on peninsular.
In your dreams, says the US State Dept, and I just can't see it happening anytime soon [i.e. in my lifetime].
But you never can tell when international diplomacy comes into play and people at least make a facade of being sensible.
And again, it comes as no surprise that the Trumpotus has no idea how to deal with such rapprochement, while he's busy kicking off a global trade war after slapping tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum.
The Europeans find the move so laughable that they have threatened to go tit-for-tat in the isolationist tariff caper, and make Levi jeans and all kinds of Bourbon & Tennessee Whisky [you know, Mr. Jim Beam and Mr. Jack Daniels] completely unaffordable across the entire European Union.
So there.
If you don't cack yrself, you'd cry.

people hate change

Comrades,

People hate change.
And nobody hates change more than Tasmanians.
Don't get me wrong, I love the place, I've been there many, many times, parts of it are beautiful beyond belief, and there's also sheep and cows and trout and stuff, but it's always struck me as a joint haunted by its past and dogged by endemic poverty [particularly in the north-west] and the fact that by far and away the biggest single employer is the State and Federal Public Service.
To call Tasmania "backward" might be a bit harsh, but it would certainly be among the last places on earth I would consider for a tree-change.
Plenty of trees if you know where to look, but no change.
Willy Hodgman of the Tasmanian Hodgman dynasty said as much while claiming victory in the election, saying "four years ago they [Tasmanians] voted for change, tonight they have voted for no change."

No change there.

He's called Will to distinguish himself from his grand-father Bill Hodgman QC who got himself elected on the conservative side of politics back in Ol' '55, so there's been Hodgman's knocking about on the electoral scene in the Land of The Eleven-Toed for more than six decades.

No change there.
All that really happened is that the Tories and Pinko's managed to pinch seats off the tree-huggers, with the Greens having spent almost all of their political capital and are now likely to be reduced to a single voice in the Parliament.
That's a long way down from being in cahoots in a power-sharing arrangement less than five years ago.
Bob Brown would be aghast.
The Pinko's picked up a couple of extra seats on account of the federal Coalition is on the nose, and the Jacqui Lambie Network really didn't have their hearts in it and went absolutely nowhere.
Jacquie knows she's really the Brian Harradine-type odd-ball in disguise and can only hope for representation in the Senate, on account of Tasmania being the quintessential example of Canberra's Upper House being made up of "unrepresentative swill".
Never mind all the red herrings that were dragged across the campaign trail, like Labor trying to deny people's inalienable right to have a pull on the pokes, Hodgo being in the pocket of the monopoly gambling lobby, and some late fudge about gun control...etc...plenty of folk don't care.

No change there.

At last count, only 324,421 punters decided to turn up, so with the turn out at just 85.1%, which together with an informal vote of 4.4%, a fifth of the electorate in a compulsory election couldn't give a blue root about the Miracle of Democracy.

No change there.
Under the Hare-Clark-McIntyre-Duckworth-Lewis multi-member system of balloting in the Apple Isle with five constituencies drawn on the exact same boundaries as Federal electorates and each returning five members, the numbers-men at the Electoral Commission would have had to get their abacus' and slide-rules out to the determine the quota's for Tassy's tiny 25 seat Parliament, which is more like a large committee than anything else, akin to a town council.
The numbers really matter because each parliamentarian represents fewer than 14 thousand participating voters.
The phenomenon of Jancidamania across the Tasman just did not translate into Rebeccamania in the Deep South, because they have never really been interested in agrarian socialism down there, as through the years most Tasmanians have been gainfully employed by the Govt. in wiping out the Tassy Tiger, building big beautiful dams on great mighty rivers, digging mines, and chopping down common or garden old-growth forest.
Timber, electricity, chocolate and animal hides remain the Island State's biggest exports...oh...and a few bales of hops and barley to keep the Mainland brewing industry going.
That said, sealing and apples fell out of favour a very long time ago.
Labor leader Rebecca "Beck" White at the tender age of 35, and only 12 months in the top job, has many many years ahead of her - if she wants to stay in the game - to hone her political nous.
And she'll need the next four before she can go again to re-build the Labor heartland, wherever that is now, and good luck to her.
Obviously, Tasmania is not quite ready for such a young local Pinko to lead them bravely forward.

No change there.

Nick the Greek on the hustings

Comrades,

As I predicted when Nick the Greek left the Senate of his own accord to return home [no need to go via the High Court], there was an outside chance he could become the Premier of the Great State of New South Wowser.
The glory of riding back into town like some kind of knight mounted upon a white steed with a sandwich board really appeals to him, it seems to me.
I'm sure that is his aim - grab the top provincial job by hook or by crook [otherwise, why would he be in it?] and then Ban the Pokies and Close the Pubs.
Nick would ban bonking too if he were in charge.
He's probably a Methodist also, and doesn't like dancing either.
No problem, just ban it.
It's as if its Old Home Week in Adelaide.
It's so easy to forget that Nick terrorised the upper house of the South Australian Parliament for more than ten years as leader of the No Pokies ticket [How much has been achieved, Nick? SA still has about 12,000 poker machines, doesn't it?], and then did the same for Canberra, but even he in the end couldn't hold his own in a house full of wackjobs & misfits, as more loopy folk than you could poke a stick at started getting elected to the Senate.
There are others in on the scam now; "preference whisperers" are a dime a dozen.
A bloody circus, it is, so he decided to take his ball and go home.
So there's a 20+ year political apprenticeship right there for Nick "No Win No Fee" Xenophon & Co.
He didn't come down in the last shower.
But for mine, you can never trust those shifty lawyer types; too prone to hectoring and getting on their hobby horses [and, Joisus, he's got a few], and in Nick's case, silly stunts.
God, I wonder if he will parade a goat on a rope down the Rundle Mall urging punters not to "kid about" with their vote this time around?
Don't mention the mule/donkey thing, or someone will dob Nick into the RSPCA and try to pin animal cruelty on him.
Still, the SABEST experiment should be a good one, as Xenophon knows that all he needs to do is pinch a few marginal seats off the Liberals, safe in the knowledge that they're full of flip-flopping voters, while all Pinko Uncle Jay has to do is hold the Labor heartland and job's right, job's done.
Just keep beating Tories, Mr Weatherill, and let the others get on with splitting the Conservative vote and throwing away some bargaining chips.
According to Nick there will be "no cosy backroom deals", "no power-sharing arrangements", "no compromises" [unless, of course, you agree to implement his scattergun agenda - but what do you actually stand for, Nick? Apart from the simple pleasures of holding people over a barrel. Have you ever kept a bastard honest?]
Don Dunstan would be revolving in his grave.
According to Don, the Miracle of Democracy works best if it's a straight out knuckle-fight between left & right.
You can run all the side issues you like, but there must be a solid platform
And don't get Nick started on wind power OK?; hates it, reckons wind turbines ruin people's lives - the constant woosh, woosh, woosh of the blades rots yr brain - and he's looking to be Premier of a state that puts a massive wack of renewable energy into the grid?
Now, if you mention this opposition to wind farms on the basis of the mental impairment of the people who live near them, Nick will accuse you having a "brain fart".
Go figure.
Harnessing the breeze?
Shootin' the breeze?
What the?
Whatever, just ban it.

In Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail [1972], Hunter S.Thompson advocates taking the Miracle of Democracy very seriously at the retail level, as he contends that fully 25% of voters have no idea who they are going to vote for until they see a campaign poster that appeals to them, which you must then re-reinforce at the polling stations by plastering as many you can all over the shop on the day of the vote without earning the ire of the Electoral Commissioner's deputy.
And it's always the face that does it when you say "vote for me", so it better be a great shot of your good side; the slogan comes a distant second.
It's excellent that the candidates in the Rust Belt election know this, and have continued to uphold the grand tradition of South Australians outdoing themselves.

Some nice Stobie Pole action.
As always, a quality field there.
And there's still three weeks to go in this one...

[Photo's. Instagram: ShitAdelaide/Betoota Advocate. Twitter: Rod Moffat]

the bloody brilliant Bonking Ban

Comrades and Mad Rooters,

Up until now, I have purposely refrained from making any public comment on the private life of the Hon. Leader of the National Party, Barnaby Thomas Gerard Joyce, MHR.
But I simply can't go past the Bonking Ban as it is absolutely bloody brilliant, isn't it?
What a masterstroke of knee-jerk running-dog Govt.
A unilateral ministerial no-exceptions ban.
For a Minister of the Crown, in and out and all about with anyone in the office is finished.
Male or female, it's done.
It's over.
There will be no more a rootin' and no more a tootin'.
None.
Voila!
That's it.
Problem solved.
Ahhh...what happens if Canberra is actually one gigantic office?
No, no, no.
Shagging each other senseless is out the window...gone...and it will, must, most definitely stop - immediately.
No, no, no more "bits" or "pieces" "on the side".
No more going around setting up sneaky little '"love nests".
Has no one ever heard of the word mistress until now?
Good, because it is never to be heard again, under the new Ministerial Code of Conduct.
Somehow it smacks of locking the gate after the horse has bolted, never mind that ordinary back-benches can continue to get themselves fully involved in the fuck-fest without fear of public sanction.
It's not terribly surprising, of course, that Mr Trundle called Mr Joyce a "low bum" who was more or less involved in "a shocking misjudgement, a world of woe, and general appallingness".
I love that word - 'appalling'
Of course the Prime Minister finds it all "appalling".
It's political poison; Mr Trundle can hear his own death rattle here, because he knows he can never rule without a coalition partner - however "appalling" their leader may be.
And, after being lectured with a public reading of the Riot Act, the Deputy Prime Minister only compounds his "appalling" persona by seeing everyone and everything, except himself, as "inept".
The Country Party rump has been exposed as weak and gutless - no news there, everyone knew that all along anyway - but more importantly, both Malcolm and Barnaby have shown their hands as the hypocritical bastard individuals that they are.
Hoist, by their own petard.
Being the low-grade, scumbag, unscrupulous journalist well known for his morals that I am, I've never been perturbed by the concept of "getting a bit", as long as it's done in the right and proper fashion following all the rules and customs - let alone the complexity of human frailty - but the screaming-naked bald-faced hypocrisy of it all is what shits me to tears.
Who doesn't despise elected officials doing one thing and saying another?
And you don't need me to tell you about the Country Party's misogyny, staunch upholding of 'traditional family values', and their reactionary denial of and outright opposition to gender equality, viz a viz trying to sabotage the gay marriage 'postal survey'.
The list goes on.
In my more than 30 years as a working journo, banging around in commercial radio and TV newsrooms, I had a fair bit to do with the Canberra Press Gallery.
Back in the day when "off-the-record" still meant something there was only very rarely any problem with the NatCap lifestyle.
Pollies of every stripe, journo's, press secretaries, spin doctors, lobbyists, influence peddlars, ordinary staffers, political departmental people, the typing pool, number's men, the honest toilers and public servants, hangers-on, handsomely paid loafers and masters of the dark arts in general all knew there was very little chance of being caught out as long as you conducted yourself according to protocol, because the cone of silence had been well and truly lowered and screwed down tight.
What happens in Canberra stays in Canberra.
"This is not 'Nam! There are rules!" This is politics.
With the Great Unwashed kept in the dark, there was endless hanky-panky going on; it was one of the Canberra radio bureau's who coined the popular, but rather brutal phrase "who's up who, and for what?" while making polite enquiries about people's personal arrangements.
It was the sole concern of a vast Parliamentary gossip machine that had its network of tentacles squirming their way into every festering nook and cranny, but none of it, not a single word, was for publication, even if it was outrageously blatant common knowledge and the worst kept secret in the National Capital.
Of course not.
It was/is one of the best protection rackets going.
Someone was always "getting their broccoli cooked" which was code for two or more people in, around, beside and behind the Press Gallery fucking each other like Duracell rabbits.
In another era, the whole sordid business could have continued on unabated, unreported, even if Joycey hadn't made the fundamental error of "getting the mistress up the duff", [more a case of being very neglectful rather than anything else, I hear the Country Party cry], but now, in a #metoo world, having a "love child" at 50 is more than likely to be fatal for the Govt. with a big swathe of the electorate thinking the hypocrisy is beyond the pale.
Keep up - women have got the vote now too, you know.
All sorts of people have got the vote and they'll make up their own minds.
And now former reporters who've seen it all are telling me that we should be pissed off, because us filthy journo's - who have always been up to our own grotty grubby groins in it ourselves - are now being asked to pass judgement, and decide what gets published and what doesn't.
Talk about shifting the goalposts.
Clearly, that's an untenable position to be in.
Doesn't anyone read the gossip columns anymore?
To mix some metaphors, once Pandora's Box has been opened, and the genie is out of the bottle, where do you draw a line in the sand?
Or do we go along the Fleet Street route and just do away with the sandbox altogether?
I used to have a News Director who all through the long-running Bill "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" Clinton tawdriness, would delight in doing a fabulous impression of the Pope saying in a long, slow Gregorian chant "head...jobs...are...O...K..."
As far as he was concerned, as long as the "tunnel of love" wasn't involved, there was no story. Full stop.
And as he pointed out, it was only a man who happened to be in the Oval Office who "had a mole on his back and an extremely small penis", after all.
It goes without saying that wherever power, influence and money is involved - never mind the rorting and corruption - there will always be sex, drugs and rock'n'roll bubbling along somewhere there just beneath the surface.
In the highly charged constantly changing 24-hour full-on atmosphere of a sitting week, everyone knows that 'after hours' drinking and bonking go hand-in-hand into that good night, raging and rooting is rampant, and everyone, and I mean everyone, is backing the horse called "Self Interest".
But not anymore.
Oh no siree.
It's over.
In the books under "Bonking Ban".
Dead, buried, and cremated by Prime Ministerial edict.
My arse it is.
It was nice knowing you Malcolm, and even nicer knowing that you'll go down in the little Canberra history books as the Great and Glorious Banner of the Bonk.
A drover's dog could lead Labor to easy victory if an election was held this weekend without the Pinko's even having to say or do anything, with the wreckage of the Coalition now in flaming ruins.
And they have no-one to blame except themselves.

a modest selection of scuttle-butt

Comrades,

I offer you this modest selection of scuttle-butt that appeared on yr Social Media in Oct/Nov 2017, without comment, finishing with a snap shot of the Beetrooter's Facebook page, on Father's Day, 2016.
Charming stuff.

"it is not a birthright"

Drinkers for Disarmament,

I've noted the rumours that are rife within military intelligence circles at the minute that them damned Ruskies are working on developing a nuclear torpedo.
What a jolly jape that would be!
You can understand My Mate Vlad's response to DJ Trump!'s promise on the campaign trail that, while he really would prefer a world without nukes, but seeing the USA has got them, he's going to build the Biggest, Best and most Beewdiful thermonuclear weapons there are.
Putin has probably already got the biggest muthafukka, so why not get a sneaky one going too?
If you just want to blow up a random port city or some naval installation, then why not let a Big One go underwater from a submarine, and see what happens.
It'd make a right mess of whatever they were after, but it's likely they're heading down a dead-end street.
The only comparable thing I can think of is the one and only nuclear artillery shot.
That's right, shoot The Bomb out of a gun.
Great idea.
It was Upshot–Knothole Grable [the boffins must've thought that one up over a long pissy lunch].
It happened at the Nevada Test Site back in '53.
They managed to lob the artillery shell - which weighed about a third a tonne - only about ten kilometres away before it went up...bahoompha!
It had an yield of about 15kt, roughly the same as Little Boy at Hiroshima and it was of the same type of atom bomb, but it wasn't very successful.
Far too close to the very heavy artillery to be of any use to an advancing army, and it only knocked over a few jeeps and armoured personnel carriers due an unforeseen shock pressure wave anomaly it created due to it's detonation height and weird physics I don't pretend to understand.
Nah, not worth it, the Yanks concluded, and they never did it again, despite a fairly impressive mushroom cloud.

16mm film courtesy US Dept. of Energy.

But The Donald reckons he's gonna get one up on Putin, who's been accused of violating the 30-year-old Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty [INF - remember that one? The Reagan & Gorbachev rapprochement], which effectively bans the use or development of any nuclear missile that travels between 500 and 5,500 kilometres.
The US and the then Soviet Union dismantled more than two and a half thousand nukes because of it.
The idea originally was to protect Europe from tactical nuclear warfare.
Never mind the nuclear torpedo fantasy, the Pentagon says straight up to anyone who'll listen that the Putinites have also been secretly working on a rapidly deployable cruise missile system for that exact range, which may or may not be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.
No, no, no.
So what does the Trumpotus do?
He orders Defence to start work on their own submarine based missile, with a live warhead, to do the exact same thing.
Voila!
After many decades of disarmament from the insanity and stupendous cost of the enormous nuclear stockpiles held during the Cold War - don't you worry about Fat Boy Kim - the real serious nuclear arms race is now back on.
Have no doubt about it.
The level of mistrust between the superpowers is like a smouldering volcano hanging out for an eruption, constantly simmering; it never stops once it really gets going.
That's dangerous.
With The Donald in the White House and the mid-terms this year and Putes struggling to get out the vote in a one-party election while he's still busy being in the meddling caper, it's only going to get worse.
This week's edition of Time magazine has a couple of excellent yarns on The Bomb for the layman, and in there is a grim warning to the generations coming on in a quote from Air Force General Paul Selva, Vice-Chairman, US Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicating that the phenomena of a world without nuclear warfare for 72 years is just plain lucky:
"Strategic stability in the world between our nuclear competitors and our nuclear peers has been assumed. It is not a birthright".
And not only has the President of the United States made it clear he also wants to violate the INF himself in some tit-for-tat, even scarier is the fact that he's apparantly ordered the Nevada Test Site [which has been very effectively mothballed for yonks - they even do monthly visits for nuclear tourists] to be put back on enough of a footing so they can test a nuclear weapon there within six months if required [bugger the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty], according to Time.
Nothing sinister of course, just to make sure the damnable things still work, as he's planning to spend about $US1.2 TRILLION on 'modernising' and maintaining the entire US nuclear stockpile of at least six and a half thousand weapons in various states of repair and readiness, and build more, and he doesn't want to waste that kind of cash.
The sheer scale of the greenbacks required would go a long way to reconstructing America's rotting civil infrastructure and build many, many Big Beautiful Walls, if you want, but not only does Eisenhower's all-powerful military/industrial complex have a friendly ear in the Oval Office, they've got a complicit Commander-in-Chief, and aren't they going for it?
There is a shitload of money to be made in mass destruction, as always.
I know, I know, you've guessed it, I've got a bee in my bonnet about The Bomb...again.
Of course I'm simply farkin' outraged by all of this, but why doesn't any of it surprise?
This is not sabre rattling or even international posturing anymore, it's spoiling for a fight.
Five-star generals and their military strategists who have this fanciful notion that "tactical" nuclear warfare is actually possible are fools to themselves and are a very heavy burden on the planet, because in this caper, it's all or nothing, baby.
The Trumpotus, of course, is enamoured by the concept that you can selectively annihilate your enemies for all time in a "limited" way, at the push of the Big Beautiful Nuclear Button.
Along the lines of the most hated Senator in Washington, Ted Cruz, who openly says he wouldn't mind if he could see if "sand glows in the dark".
Little wonder the "Doomsday Clock" has shifted forward by 30 seconds.
Two minutes to midnight...and counting.
If Armageddon don't get ya, climate change will.
What a wonderful world...

you gotta get the vote

Comrades,

So, the DJ Trump! presidency is a quarter over, and the poor man has been forced to cancel a celebratory golfing weekend in the balmy climes of Florida on account of the administration of Govt. is in the process of shutting down.
It's no surprise really, as that's the way it's been going for the past 12 months; America through the S-bend and out to a filthy polluted sea.
And my, how time flies when yr having fun.
It seems like only yesterday that I wandered into a random bar on the night The Donald was being swept into office by a handful of rednecks at the polls, and seeing scribbled in chalk on a blackboard above the top shelf that read:
"The Edge...there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over - HST".
What the pea-brain rattling inside the over-sized cranium of the Trumpotus has failed to understand is that while you can rig the Electoral College all you like, and a little birdie might be constantly singing 'tweet tweet', when you get to Washington you gotta get the vote, if you need to get yr grubby mits on a single penny of Federal money.
He can't get the 60 he needs in the Senate now, and Republicans will be trounced in the November "mid-terms" and lose their majorities in both Houses, so, if he isn't already, DJ! will become a lame-duck President for his last two years in office, that's if he doesn't drop dead or resign first, or he cops it with both barrels from Bobby "Three Sticks" Mueller for foolin' 'round with them damned Ruskies and ends up in an impossible imbroglio of an impeachable position.
Oh, oh, oh, it's all so predictable...
You get the cheeseburger [hold the pickle] and diet Coke politicians you deserve, baby.

In the meantime, I note that the knitted winter woolen Pussy Hat was dusted off over the weekend for the Women's March II across The States [and the world, for that matter].
The Americans are past masters when it comes to making protest placards, in a democracy where anything goes, and free speech [even Twitter] is Constitutionally protected.
You've gotta love 'em, and after reviewing what seems like hundreds in the crowds, here are just two of my favourites.
Go girls!

and then came this

Comrades,

Things sensible have never been widely reported in the news, what with the Silly Season going well beyond its end date in Washington DC as furious arguments rage over which countries are shitholes, and which aren't.
So it was little wonder that only scant coverage emerged in the western press of South and North Korean excellencies & dignitaries sitting down to formal talks in a bit of old fashioned diplomacy over that timeless political football - sport.
Our course, the IOC has invited the North Korean Olympic Committee, their delegation and their team to the PyeongChang winter games in about three weeks time.
The IOC - which has never been political, oh no - will have anyone, now that they've pretty much lost their ability to elicit bribes.
They'll be in their element, as it's a top spot for snow sports at the mo' with the temps last week typically in the -9°C to +1°C range.
Unmatched top-shelf seven-star facilities, also.
I don't know about you, but I'll be going off-piste for the duration.
South Korea agreed to a North Korean request for their officially sanctioned cheer squads to be allowed to attend the games armed with thousands of little North Korean flags on sticks.
In the trade off, North Korea agreed there would be no hanky-panky or funny business during the games; no shooting rockets off or letting Big One's go, in the name of the mutually accepted idea of peace, even tho' they have never completely come around to it, given the truce is now 64 years old, and let's face it, it's all about face, and not losing it.
People have forgotten that the Korean peninsular remains the most heavily militarised spot on the planet.
Since the armistice, as a nod to peace and reconciliation, both countries have had Ministers for Reunification while maintaining huge standing armies of around 1.6M active personnel North/South combined, ready for battle tomorrow, along with something like nine million army reserves and paramilitaries to call on.
So the gates of the border ceremonially opened as impeccably suited gentlemen from each side arrived to meet to polite applause and handshakes all 'round for some chit-chat in that wild & wacky place known as the Korean DMZ.
PyeongChang is just 80km south of the 38th parallel or thereabouts, so the North's team buses won't have far to go, bringing with them trailer loads of crates of quality seafoods and gallons of top-notch Made in North Korea soju, to get them in the mood.
The South promises they will do all they can to prevent the North Koreans from defecting [there will be Choco Pies, aplenty], but asked in return that the North release some political prisoners.
Talks go on.
Backroom boys in smoke filled dens are still working on the idea of fielding a combined North/South Korean women's ice hockey team, because they know as separate entity's they haven't got a hope in snowflakes of medalling, but together could give the hockey comp a good shake.
Makes sense.
Of course this has very little to do with the Miracle of Democracy in a part of the world rife with rampant corruption and cronyism, but it says a fair bit about rapprochement.
You'll remember it took months of street protests in Seoul to evict from the Blue House the former President, Park Geun-hye, accused of being totally on the take by creaming about $US75M off the top of bribes paid by the chaebol in order to get on with the business of doing business.
Park is in the jailhouse now, and that resulted in the fait accompli election of Moon Jae-in as no-one else really put their hand up for the job.
Enough already has been said about Fat Boy Kim, the very personification of corruption and cronyism.
Then came this.
Have you ever regretted writing a very personal text message or e-mail, and then pushing the 'send' button, instantly knowing you have made a terrible mistake?
Like dropping that letter that you never meant to send in the postbox?
Ever called yr bosses a useless mob of utter wankers, or worse, and then sent them all the txt mssg by mistake?
There is no calling it back or sending it into a black hole, once you send it, it stays sent.
Have you ever got a together a txt mssg that says the Great State of Hawaii is about to go up in one helluvan exploding fireball at any minute and then sent it off to all one million mobile phone users, advising them to panic and run for the hills, or hide in a bomb shelter, or maybe a handy manhole, that you may or may not have, otherwise you are all going to burn in hell?
There is no heaven in this one:

To their credit, the good burghers of Honolulu, at least, didn't panic, they simply went to the beach in small groups with bottles of their finest whiskies and bourbons and sat under the gently swaying palms to watch the horizon for the incoming multi-kiloton Armageddon which sends the Hawaiian archipelago to the bottom as flaming wreckage.
Sort of brings new meaning to the old idea "if the ship is on fire, there is instinct to answer the call 'all hands to the pumps!' but honest desire remains to stay seated and at ease while awaiting your fate".
The Dept. of Deefense, Hawaiian authorities, or somebody or another who wasn't looking at the time, blamed "human error" for the clusterfuck.
Well, if some dumb intern in the Communications Dept. can fire off that one with a press of the green button marked 'send', then it doesn't really matter who's got the bigger Big Beautiful Nuclear Button on their desks, does it?
DJ Trump, early in his Presidency, delegated all matters military to his generals, so he's not the only one with the foreign policy numbers in the briefcase.
Like Trump, Fatboy is not a madman; they aint no nutjobs, they're just cruel and calculating in everything they do to advance and protect their own brands and interests.
Mr Moon has recently re-established the hotline with Pyŏngyang, and installed the big red telephone at the end of it on his desk.
He don't need no button.
North and South want the Trumpotus out of the Korean deal, but at the minute it seems some low ranking lieutenant wackjob in the US Air Force could push the no going back send button "human error"-style on a bunch of ballistic missiles, and it's good night nurse, in a megaton kind of way.
ICAN didn't win the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for nuthin', you know.
Easily fixed.
No nukes.

[Graphic: Hanna Barczyk/NYT]