a 100% pickled British turnip

Comrades,

Hasn't the Miracle of Democracy been on wheels this week?

Never mind the Papal Election that is the British Conservative Party tortuously trying to appoint a new Prime Minister by balloting the shit out of each other, with vote after vote after vote, until there is just one man left standing. And it will be a man, as Teflon Tessa has had her day. Just when will there be white smoke from the chimney? How they must envy our Tories, where all it takes in a party room "spill" and the PM can be dead meat with a knife in the back literally overnight. None of this dragging it out over weeks and months. It's really neither here nor there anyway, given everyone knows Big Bad Bonkers Boris; a man best known for his outstanding buffoonery with a first rate penchant for gaffe making, will become leader on the Queen's commission. Everybody knows. There's not much irony in the fact that the Poms will be dragged out of Europe kicking and screaming whether they like it or not by a bloke who was once described as "Britain's worst ever Foreign Minister" [and there have been a few], a dodgy former Lord Mayor of London, and a dead-set ridgey-didge dinky-dye pickled British Turnip. 100% British. He is not ageing well and at 55 his current appearance worries me. His pasty complexion and faintly disgusted expression makes Boris look like he perpetually wants to vomit, and his general demeanour gives the impression of some kind of dishevelled deviant. So, no irony at all that he's got the vote.

Never mind that the Minister for the Home Office back here in the Colonies has chucked a tanty, calling a Federal Court judgement stupid. It drives him mad. Dutto described the legislation that was allegedly snuck in by stealth under the cover of darkness to provide for the medical evacuation of sick people in our refugee camps to mainland hospitals as "Labor's law, and it needs to be fixed". You bewdy, win the election, and if you don't like the law, just change it. By-pass the High Court altogether. Brilliant! Nice one your Honourable Mr Penis Head, but try getting that one past the Senate in a hurry. There will always be a Senator for Tasmania who'll be the stick in the mud. Aren't there other things that need a hurry up and a fixin' before "quantitative easing" kicks in as it all goes to hell in a hand-basket? Arrogance incarnate from the bald-faced right wing extremist.

And never mind Chairman Ping of China turning up in Pyongyang for a chin-wag with Fat Boy Kim, scheming over some fine French wine and Cuban cigars. A couple of world class gold standard despots - not seeing much interest in democracy there. Just have a lookie at what's been going down in Honkers lately. You know what Marxists are like.

No, no, the real action is on the campaign trail, with DJ Trump! officially announcing mid-week that he's gonna make another run for the White House. This presents difficulties for the Democrats. The incumbent always has the distinct advantage of incumbency, and The Donald doesn't need to go through the tedious, endless rounds of Primaries to get the nomination again. The Republicans have got one bullet in the chamber, but beyond that, they've got nothing, and they know it. The Trumpotus can now leave the running of the country to his inept cronies, and get on-message full time, has he did in his opening loud mouthed gibberish to another Rent-A-Crowd, with more of the same...yep - more hate, more vitriol, more lies, more threats, more revenge, etc etc et al. The ageing mobster knows it's a long way to the shop if you want a sausage roll in America, kicking off a thousand day campaign all the way through to Melbourne Cup day Tuesday the 3rd of November next year. That's like the Long March - where only toughest survived - and they say a week is a long time in politics? The Democrats are stuck in a ménage à trois of old people; "that agrarian socialist from the backlots of Vermont", "a fake Red Indian", and Uncle Joe, who's only making a run because his son, on his deathbed, told him that he must. While only a case a day of Diet Cokes and fistfuls of powerful pharmaceuticals keeps the 73-year-old Trumpotus going, Bernie Sanders is 77, Joe Biden is 76, and Liz Warren - a real summer baby - turns 70 tomorrow, but I rate her as the underdog. She could very well loom up as the dark horse. But that, it seems, is all they've got. While the Yoof of Today are represented in the over-stuffed field of Democrat candidates, they all know they haven't got a snowflakes. Not much hope for the Land of The Free then, when all the main contenders will be long dead by the short time it will take before the planet is fully cooked.

With a psychopath looking to extend his stay in the Oval Office to eight years, here's betting there'd be some burghers in the Grand Old Party who pine nostalgically for simpler, more innocent days...

a real live stinker

Comrades,

I don't intend to bang on [well, not for too long] about the AFP suddenly becoming interested in the filing cabinets of journo's. I have to fess up to a conflict of interest here, because I is one. I'm as precious as any of them. I'll leave it up to the editors of that august journal, the New York Times, to tease out at arm's length the totalitarian aspects of this particular threat to the Miracle of Democracy in a joint that has been described as "the world's most secretive democracy". If there's one thing that the Yanks are good at, it's plain speakin':

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/06/opinion/australia-journalists-police-raids.html?te=1&nl=nyt-australia&emc=edit_aust_20190607


If pollies, spooks, and the cops can all use informers with complete impunity, and journo's can't, then there's something very wrong. Before there were such things as Degrees in Journalism, I was trained on the job back-in-the-day to sniff out even the slightest whiff of stink, in the hope of getting a top scoop with a real good one that's rotting from the head down. No wonder they used to call us hacks "blowies", as in blowflies; always hanging around dead meat. Official misconduct is just grist for the mill for us. The current imbroglio has got absolutely nothing to do with 'national security', whatever that is. That's a very very convenient cop out.  Just as a for instance, what on earth is ScoMo thinking about the Defence Signals Directorate? - who have no business or interest whatsoever in domestic affairs, for Chrissake. That's ASIO's job, ScoMo! Hello? The demarcation is very clear. Does the PM really think there is an organised military threat from within? And what the hell ASIS is up to is anyone's guess, because nobody knows. Australia has had no less than three secret spy agencies since WWII, when others went with one, to wit, the CIA and the KGB. WTF?

And do tell me the ABC poking around the story of the Defence Dept. investigation of 'possible' Australian war crimes in Afghanistan is not of public interest. C'mon, boys, it's not like 'Nam anymore, where whatever happened in 'Nam, stayed in 'Nam. There are rules. There are witnesses who clearly know and will say under oath that there have been plain bloody murderers in the ranks of the SAS. Seems to me there is little question prima facie that innocent unarmed civilians were killed - with intent, and that's the important point here - and, excuse me, but under the rules of warfare, it's not a matter of "degree". People die, accidents do happen, civilian casualties are a regular feature of military conflict, but murder is murder, and that's that. And that's not even accounting for the allegations of the cutting off of dead enemy hands or the brutal mistreatment of POWS, or the bullying of troopers and the cover-ups of the above, or a VC being involved in a very active campaign to legally threaten to discredit his creditable accusers. What is the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force waiting for? What is he afraid of? Who is pulling the strings here? Who is the shadow puppet master? Why the secrecy? Why not just throw the weight of evidence to an open public court-martial made up of the highest ranking military legal minds in the country, let reporters report on it, and let the Judge-Advocate decide whether to send them to a jury trial or not? Or a committal hearing, or another bloody Royal Commission. I don't care. There's always the "fog of war" defence, which a jury may very well accept.

But don't hold yr breath. Far too controversial. Why everything is being conducted behind closed doors just opens another Pandora's Box. There are dark forces at work here, and it's a real live stinker. Believe you me. Memo to AFP: That's why the ABC is interested in it. The smell is not right. Oh, no siree. I'd like to see how the cops would go recommending Ita Buttrose to the DPP for prosecution, because that's where the buck stops, I'm afraid, at the top. The journo's are just her hard hacking minions, answerable to no-one except their boss. The Press? We are entitled.

Please don't get me started on former ACT Attorney-General, Bernard Collaery, and his client Witness K being criminally charged over revealing that Australia had illegally bugged the East Timor Govt's Cabinet room in Dili during crucial talks over gas and oil reserves 15 years ago; plainly a badly botched job by dodgy Australian spooks trying to get the edge over the long-suffering Timorese as they went about robbing them dead-set blind, on behalf of rapacious multi-national vested interests. Under the state secrets arrangements they could have even been charged for revealing they've been charged. They had to get an MP to do that for them under parliamentary priveledge. It's effectively destroyed both men's lives, and I sincerely hope and believe that when that one gets to a court of law next month for mention, they appear with a phalanx of right-minded QC's acting pro bono to defend them in perhaps the most outrageous prosecution in living memory. And when they are acquitted, they go the Govt. hard, very hard, for compo. See, you did get me started. Quite obviously it's a subject close to my heart, and it makes my blood boil.

It's very unsettling when Our Great and Glorious Leader says “it never troubles me that our laws are being upheld” when he's in charge of the laws he wants upheld, when it suits him. ScoMo is entirely disinterested in law reform, unless it's to further enrich his mates or ever more tightly gag and crush 'whistle blowers' in the spurious name of 'national security'. So, will we have to just suck it up and contend with more of the same, and quite possibly, much worse?
You can call me old fashioned and whinge all you like, but I fear that it will be so.

"a darker shade of battleship grey"

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and his wife Jenny, visit Bishop Epalle Catholic School in Honiara, 3 June 2019. Photo: Darren England/AAP.

Comrades,

By complete chance late on Monday afternoon I found myself tootling along Art Gallery Rd with a couple of out-of-towners in the motor who somehow knew the Chinese navy was in town. I didn't know. Sydney didn't know. We weren't told. I wondered aloud "d'ya'reckon the RAN fired a few warning shots over their bows before giving them clear passage thru' to Woolloomooloo Bay, y'know, just for the fun of it?". As we swung around Mrs Macquarie's Chair, past the flock of Chinese tourists taking selfies with the sun setting behind The Bridge, there they were. Tied up front and centre at Garden Island. The dude next to me remarked "they're a darker shade of battleship grey". And in very good nick too, they are, compared to a couple of our rusting old hulks that'd been shoved up the dock's runter to make way. While the Govt. explained it away as a "routine reciprocal visit", there were some mutterings about the very peculiar timing. Was it a none-too-subtle warning to the 27 thousand Chinese students who were given permanent residency here in a "captain's call" by RJL Hawke in the wake the Tiananmen Sq. Massacre 30 years ago that...WE ARE STILL WATCHING YOU...?

So now it all made sense. Our Great and Glorious Leader tapped on the shoulder by the Grand Poo Bah of the Dept. of Prime Minister & Cabinet and told "Foreign Affairs says you're off to Honiara!" - on his first trip abroad as a properly elected Prime Minister. ScoMo turns up with $250M in cash in the cargo hold of RAAF One in what another confidant described as "shame money" for doing jack shit in the South Pacific for so many decades. And it's taken until now for Straya to prick up its ears only because China is spending billions, not millions, on 'soft power'. The fact that it's taken eight years for a Prime Minister of any stripe to show up and review The Royal Solomon Islands Police Force's finest on parade is empty symbolism at best, but make no mistake, these things are noticed in the Islands, even tho' rare appearances are the norm. While we're now busy sinking money into roads and bridges instead of health and education, there's nothing in it for places like Tokelau [just as an example of many] where global warming is already a catastrophe and they will soon enough cease to exist as their islands sink beneath the waves. What happens then to the thousands of "climate change refugees"? Swim? With the Hon. Mr Penis Head Dutton currently in Sri Lanka holding up a big banner saying "Stop The Boats", that's just about their only option.

When I was last in Vanuatu two years ago and Samoa last year there was a robust debate going on in both countries about Chinese aid and investment, which locals freely admit to being conflicted about - the plain obvious benefits, as well as the significant downside of sinking further into what they already largely have - a "dependent economy". It's a fraught business. At the risk of repeating myself, the obvious problem with Australia's attitude to the South Pacific is that it is still deeply rooted in colonialism, of which the Islanders, with good reason, are very leery. Foreign Affairs seems to forget most of these joints have been independent for 50 years or more [with the glaring exceptions of New Caledonia and West Papua], and are perfectly capable of determining who's money is going to do the talking. Besides, there's no votes in what we do in Paradise, but there certainly are in fear, in this case, the rapacious Yellow Peril.

So of course, after his token cash splash-down in the Solomons, ScoMo's next port of call was, you guessed it, The Heart of the Empire - for an audience with The Queen. No doubt Queenie would have asked "What's shaking in the Solomon's, Scott? Me and Phil haven't been there since we cruised through on the Royal Yacht Britannia, back '74? They were rock'n'roll times, weren't they?". They would have talked of nothing else. Just like Australia, The Queen remains head of state in the Solomons, with the Guvna-General, Sir Frank Kabui, her man on the ground there. All very appropriate. ScoMo gave the Queen an autographed copy of the biography of the racehorse Winx [rrp $44.95], while ScoMo got a ukulele so he can bang out those Hawaiian toons he's so fond of as one of his party tricks from Manasseh Sogavare, who's now into his fourth non-consecutive stint as the Solomon's PM. All very appropriate.

It's been a big week for the 93 year old; hosting a State Dinner at Buck Pal for the Trumpotus would have been utterly exhausting in its excruciation, and then The Donald's best buddy ScoMo turns up for tea. "God", she would have asked her Private Secretary, "what on earth next?".

The President of the United States, Donald Trump, does his best cat's arse impression for Queen Elizabeth, London, 3 June 2019. Photo/Getty Images.