"you can't make fun of a clown"

NSW Premier, Gladys Berejiklian, on the hustings in Wagga Wagga, 8 September, 2018.

Comrades,

The Miracle of Democracy is spinning right out of control at the minute, and aint that gooood?
So, why not start with the Wagga Wagga state by-election a while back now, where, after all the jiggery-pokery and brou-ha-ha in Canberra, the Tories primary vote collapsed by fully 29%, allowing a conservative "independent" stooge to take the seat - the first time the Liberals have lost there in 60+ very odd years?
That'll do.
I'd never heard of the winning candidate, Doc Joe #givejoeago McGirr, who by all reports is a reasonably well-known local medico [and academic] who's been a long-time rabble-rouser in the Rural Doctors lobby, but what he intends to actually have a go at remains something of a mystery.
As it turns out, if it wasn't for the preference swap, the Pinko's had a fighting chance of pinching that seat, at least until the next State Election in five months time.
That's very very bad news for the poor ol' NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, who was shitting bricks after the Wagga ballots came in; knowing full well her Tory Govt. faces wipe out, a complete rout, extermination in the forthcoming poll, where the Liberal and Country parties will be reduced to a Parliamentary rump in a history-making landslide.
Crikey, the good burghers of the Riverina couldn't give a blue root about the multi-billion dollar debacle that is Sydney's WestConnex [they still can't work out how to hook up a staggering 32kms of new road tunnels to the airport], or the utter shambles that is the "Tram to Nowhere", construction of which has ground to a complete halt as the contractors take the Govt. to court over 'variations' worth billions - it should have been finished by now.
And don't get me started on the fanciful Metro, or the Sydenham-Bankstown Development Corridor, that will/is converting huge swathes of suburbia out here in Sydney's armpit into shoddily-built towering high-rise ghetto's.

All the votes are in Sydney, so the Tories are busy preparing themselves to cop a gigantic tusk up the runter when that mob of electorates inflict their mighty wrath.
It's no co-incidence that the Emerald City is going backwards and becoming increasingly unlivable, while Melbourne - under a Pinko Govt. - is booming if you believe the statisticians, with folks flocking to the Athens of the South to buy 'reasonably-priced' real estate and take up the apparently endless supply of quality jobs on offer there, when you'd be lucky to get a gig mucking out dunnies on this side of the island while living in a dog box that's not yours.

Of course, there was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide and no blaming the Wagga result on "state issues", after "You can call me Mal" Turnbull was monumentally rat-fucked by the fundamentalist evangelical ult-right, who inserted a compromise PM "Call me ScoMo" Morrison.
And isn't he trying ever so hard to create an image of being a "man of the people"?
Sorry Scotty, but rolling the sleeves up on yr open-necked shirt for the television cameras pretending you are working dosesn't cut the mustard.
It just gives the expression "on the nose" a new meaning.
The problem with ScoMo is most folks don't relate at all well to a baseball cap wearing, Cronulla Sharks [who, in a sweet irony, lost the preliminary final to Melbourne 22-6] supporting, weirdo happy-clapper Shire boy, going 'round saying that everything is sorted because "I've fixed it" - in cahoots with his toe-rag mates JoFry and "yes, that's right, it's Christopher" Pyne [who's now the Minister for Adelaide Submarines, God help us all].
Move on, nothing to see here.
My arse.
Little wonder Mal decamped to be amongst his monied mates in marvellous Manhattan for a Rich Dude's quality sulk, while he plots his revenge on those responsible for the party-room putsch he didn't see coming.
You aint heard the last of it, oh, no siree.

Meantime, on the International Front - where the Miracle seems to be under siege everywhere - I did hear Shaun Micallef on the radio the other day explaining that he would not be doing any Trump jokes in his current series of Mad As Hell on the telly, because "you can't make fun of a clown". And even if you could, with the demented psycho making a total tool of himself on a daily basis, it would be out of date anyway by the time the show went to air.
Never mind that The Donald is in a B-double 18-wheeler truck-load of trouble; the "lodestar" op-ed by anonymous in the NYT, Bob Woodward's new "explosive" tome Fear [which surely can't be better than Hunter S Thompson's final book on the vagaries before he shot himself - called The Kingdom of Fear], the sleaze bag who will be forever known as the "Trump Appointee" to the Soopreeme Court, or Bobby "Three Sticks" Mueller sneaking around in the shadows getting legions of the Trumpotus' criminal cronies to 'roll over', or the 25th Amendment "nuclear option"- I've been saying this for quite a while now - the Great Stormy Daniels will prove to be his final downfall.
After years of investigations, the best they could get Al Capone on was tax evasion, so when the hush money paid out to Stormy is found to be as illegal-as-fuck under the campaign finance laws, I may very well live to see the day when Donald J Trump starts to serve his stretch in the Federal Penitentiary.
That's the problem when you think with yr dick, mate, and then have to take yr dirty laundry to the lawyers, er, cleaners.
But I'm not holding my breath because it's notable that under the US Constitution, an impeached President is the only person who cannot be pardoned by the new incoming President, but that's really neither here nor there, as the fraud & shyster will make a strategic decision to resign the Oval Office, to re-open the pardon possibility, regardless of his high crimes or misdemeanors.
Nixon did it, so why not The Feak?
It's impossible to make this kinda stuff up. Besides, it's all too hard to keep up.
And they haven't even got to the "mid-terms", where the Dems will take the House, no Republican legislation will ever be passed, any Democrat legislation will go down in the Senate or be vetoed, and the Donald will become a classic powerless Lame Duck in the last two year's of his Presidency - providing he doesn't ship on out to Mar-a-Lago before that.
Absolutely nothing will get done, and the Americans can be left to wallow in their own pitiful angst.

Winding around full circle back to my local stomping ground in Sydney's inner west, and there's been some interesting political posters going up around the place...it's pleasing to see ahead of the upcoming campaigning season, as there must always be room for anarchists in a robust Miracle, even tho' they are dead set against Democracy or any kind of organised system of governance for that matter.
We all know the usual tired old Anarcho-Commo trope of the clenched fist and a slogan or two SMASH-THE-STATE! FUCK-THE-POLICE!, but these are a touch more creative - seen on the streets of Dulwich Hill and Newtown last Thursday:

sandwich board man

Comrades.

There is a loveable old rogue, Danny Lim, who likes to hang around on the streets of Sydney's inner-west with a sandwich board slung around his neck.

It's his life's work. He must be in his mid-70's and he's been at it for many, many decades.

He makes his own colorful placards for the sandwich board, lately with a new innovation - smilies - that make a blunt, pithy, and to the point statement about this week's political difficulties facing Australia.

He's never been a big fan of corrupt or hyocritiocal politicians.

Danny always has a smile on his face and wears shoulder length hair and sometimes has some flowers about him, either holding a bunch or some stuffed into the pocket of his jacket, and he used to have a small dog with him there for a while, but it must have died.

Recently, he was for the innumerable time warned off the streets of one of his favourite haunts, Strathfield, for "offensive language" - which is hard to fathom given that he never speaks and remains silent, even when provoked.

So, it was a delight to see him pop up yesterday on the streets of Newtown, standing on the traffic island at King Street and Enmore Road, up to his usual standard with this week's sandwich board, that read:

mad, stupid...

Tourists,

Having recently returned from the islands, I found you've gotta love the Prime Minister of Samoa, 73-year-old Tuilaepa Lupesoliai Neioti Aiono Sailele Malielegaoi.

He's a hard ruthless strongman, [who is always referred to by his chiefly title Tuilaepa, Sailele is his Christian name by the way ABC], who's been in the job for 20 years as leader of the Human Rights Protection Party which holds a 48-2 majority in a highly convoluted Parliamentary democracy, where only matai [chiefs] can be elected as MP's, and universal suffrage has only be going since 1990 [until then, only matai had the vote].

That said, the dude's a funny guy, who has a hugely popular Sunday afternoon radio show on 2AP, where he spins his favourite Poly toons, does talkback, and tells jokes and hilarious stories. Talk about larf!

So it's little wonder he's suggested that all climate change denialists in positions of power should be confined to mental institutions - that'd be the entire right wing of the Australian Liberal Party, no?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-31/samoan-prime-minister-hits-out-at-climate-change-sceptics/10185142

Tuilaepa is also very leery of anyone with patronising colonialist tendencies...

the most unstable democracy in the South Pacific

Comrades,

Prime Minister Scott Morrison might be a godfearing Pentecostal Shire boy who flips around on the floor and speaks in tongues as a party trick and has a perverse penchant for the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks, but who will ever forget that he's also the bloke who single-handedly unleashed Lara Bingle on this world, thereby destroying the public image of the best batsman of his generation and former holder of the second highest office in the land - Strayan cricket captain - Michael J. Clarke?

So, sorry, Scotty, mate, but, ah, nah, you will never be forgiven for that.

OK, the Hon. Member for Cook, a great sea-faring man, "stopped the boats" by declaring all yachting regatta's illegal and sang the praises of a lump of good ol' home-grown coal he brought onto the floor of the House of Representatives to demonstrate global warming - "don't be afraid, don't be scared" - but presiding over years of stagnant wage growth as Chancellor of the Exchequer will be his ultimate undoing.

People hate change and Prime Ministerial churn, but perhaps one of the most remarkable things about the robustness of the Miracle of Democracy on this island is that there can be a 'bloodless' far-right Evangelical fundamentalist coup d'état led by a drafted compromise revivalist boss cocky, and it barely raises a ripple across the real world landscape.

The Commonwealth may well be the most unstable democracy in the South Pacific, but nobody turns out in massive streets protests, there's no throwing "poor shattered mannequins through a window in a riot", let alone anyone starting to take pot-shots at each other with Kalashnikov's, or lobbing mortar shells into Canberra, all over some Queensland Tory sitting-MP's shitting bricks.

New PM Friday - Bran Nue Dae Monday - and life continues to plunge on unabated.

Fancy Julia Gillard's lap dog Uncle Bill being able to enormously enjoy having the Comrades around to his place for a weekend BBQ and rollicking good piss-up in the full and safe knowledge that a Drover's Dog will come along and bite ScoMo's arse within 6-9 months in a Pinko landslide as the electorate inflicts their Mighty Wrath.

Vote the Bastards out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1LLsw1lcuA

the rise and rise of Imran Khan

Comrades,

It was very pleasing to see the Miracle of Democracy in Pakistan somehow contrive to elect former national cricket Captain and 1992 World Cup hero Imran Khan as the new Prime Minister.
Far from being a scholar of Islamic politics, I'm old enough to remember seeing the great man play, and God, he was good.
He prowled around the ground like a Prince he was so obviously a cut above the riff-raff, he was a damn fine fast man; quick superb swing and seam were his thing - taking a 'Michelle Pfieffer' [five wickets in an innings] no less than 23 times in test matches.
"Style and grace" were the words that came to mind watching him bowl - and he was lethal with a cherry in his hand - and he was also a very good late order batsman...with a handy average in the 30's batting at six or seven.
The quintessential all-rounder, and clearly a leader of men.
But you couldn't help but think during Immers' press conferences and other public utterances as Captain that he had a certain snakeyness about him, and that peculiar kind of shadyness that would make for a perfect politician.
And what's more, in an ideal entry on a pollie's CV - he was [is?] a major league womaniser, carrying on all sorts of affairs with much younger women during his first two marriages, particularly his first to his Spooky Girlfriend Jemima Goldsmith, and his current wife is the other half of a now-legitimised tryst with a woman 25 years his junior, but, hey, that comes with the territory when you are a charismatic former cricket star and you are well used to having groupies throwing themselves at you. In the end, it just becomes second nature for man like him.
Imran gave the game away at 30 - he's now 65 - and he's been in the Pakistan parliament since 2002. He's been working on this for 15 years, so he's no Johnny-come-lately. The main question is - has he left his run too late?
It is a miracle that his party, the PTI, has broken the various factions of the Muslim League's iron grip on power that they've had since the '60's, so the electorate are obviously are looking for change and are pinning their hopes on a bloke who was once a Matinee Idol.
Never mind the allegations that last month's General Election was rigged to buggery in Imran's favour, and it's no secret that the military was involved in a fair bit of foolin' around.
Given Imran comes from a Noble Game that is deeply rooted in honour and chivalry, but has so many ridiculous contradictions, and the Laws surrounding the concept of "fair" and "unfair" play are so obscure and opaque that attempts to codify them have only exposed the impossible complexity of it all, would make him perfectly suited to the Byzantine nature of Pakistani politics - where hanging by the neck, assassination, long-term incarceration and exile, not to mention coup d'état, are all legitimate weapons in the political arsenal.
So, on the face of it, Imran is well equipped to tackle corruption, with anti-graft being his major platform plank on the hustings. That said, one of his principal bowling partners back in the '80's and early 90's was "The Sultan of Swing" Wasim Akram - who was as corrupt-as-fuck - being perhaps the original and best ball tamperers of the Modern Era before the Sandpaper Scandal, and Wakka's was found by an official inquiry to be "not above suspicion" when it came to match fixing.
Goodluck Jonathon when it comes to wiping out corruption, Imran, in a system where trousering rupee's and cold hard greenbacks has been developed into a high art form - everyone is on the take [the former PM Nawaz Sharif is now doing ten years in the jail house and former military ruler General Pervez Musharraf is in hiding in Dubai], MP's claim having their snouts in the trough as an inalienable right, never mind that everyone else from the ordinary cop to the top judge, the clerk at the public service desk to the Boss Cockies in the Army brass and all the Big Men in the Big End of Town consider bribery as par for the course.
And you can't really blame MP's as every vote is for sale; the only value in the vote for dirt poor peasant farmers in the back woods or city slum dwellers in Pakistan will always be their right to sell it - to the candidate who is the highest bidder, so that can't go on forever without dipping into the public purse from time to time, can it?
What Imran is going to do with Pakistan's pathetic nuclear arsenal, and foreign policy in general, is anyone's guess.
Relations with China are a mess as usual, the United States just don't care about nobody no more; how's it going with India and the quasi-partition of Kashmir, then? And what about his next door neighbour - that intractable infernal labyrinth - Afghanistan? The best thing he could do there is junk The Bomb, and broker a peace-deal with the Taliban. Both highly unlikely prospects, you'd imagine.
I note that he said in his inaugural address to the nation hat he wanted to be known as the "Austerity PM" by doing away with the traditional motorcade of 80 bullet-proof vehicles, and eschewing the "sprawling" Prime Ministerial Residence in Islamabad [which comes with 524 servants] in favour of the military secretary's "ordinary three-bedroom" suburban gaff. That's a top start for a populist.
But on the downside, he mentioned that if he manages to stamp out corruption, then everyone, and he means everyone, will have to pay their taxes.
Now, everybody knows there's two Herculean asks right there, that are for all intents and purposes, impossible.
All power to yr oars, Immers, you'll need 'em.

Speaking of the Laws surrounding "fair" and "unfair" play, it came as no surprise whatsoever that that dick-wad nut-job turn-coat, that most unrepresentative Senator of the motley crew making up The Unrepresentative Swill, The Hon. Senator for Queensland, Fraser Anning, would drop the "race card" in his maiden speech to the Senate, nine months after being duly elected by the High Court sitting as the Court of Disputed Returns.
This from a bloke who found One Nation was not sufficiently fascist, so he threw his galling lot in with Crazy Bob's Katter Party, just to prove he's much further to the right on the political spectrum than Genghis Khan ever was.
Of course it called for and got widespread condemnation - even the Hon. Senator Hanson described the speech as "appalling" - but people so easily forget the Australian Constitution is littered with race cards that have no hope of ever being repealed, and that a re-introduction of the White Australia Policy would go down a treat with the rednecks among The Deplorables. But you'd have to doubt that it would gain much electoral traction in 21st Century Straya? .
But, what got up my goat was the tree-hugging unreformed Trots down at the Greens calling for a Code of Conduct to be introduced in the Senate. Code of Conduct? What next? Who are they kidding?
Parliamentary privilege is not called a "privilege" for nothing - it should be rarely and wisely used, but MP's, surely, must have the right to get up in the Parliament and say whatever they bloody well farkin' like, without fear or favour - or with fear and favour in the case of this certain Queensland publican.
Anyone remember Wilson "Iron Bar" Tuckey? A much better hotelier that Fraze will ever be. And Wilson could do right-wing vitriol right out there with the very best of 'em.
In any case, Anning faces re-election at the next poll as he's a short-term Senator, where he will be plunged into well-deserved life-long obscurity and the entry for him in the little history books will be shorter than that reserved for the likes of everyone who has been disqualified from sitting in the Parliament since PM Trundle's disastrous Double Dissolution - and even the likes the late, great Senator Albert Field will shine like beacons in the texts, compared to this miserable steaming turd.

Seems I didn't miss much being abroad for the "Super Saturday!" round of by-elections, but I did hear that the Pinko's went rather well.
Certainly looks like it put The Fear up PM Trundle - who doesn't like The Fear up him - and now he's made a complete and utter bungle of that world-class cluster-fuck known as The NEG [a bit like that pre-historic shark The MEG, Malcolm, it's coming to eat you whole, after all that flip-flopping you've done on Climate Change through the years. Don't you know that Global Warming is such a hot button issue right now? The Curse of the Former Environment Minister? CO₂ emissions coming clean out of your arse?], and finds whatever credibility he had left in tatters.
So, it's little wonder that a Bald-Faced Dome-Headed Freak Show should creep up behind him and threaten to stab him the back.
How 35 Conservatives in a Party Room of 83 could possibly think that that bonce and that dial could be remotely electable as Prime Minister is beyond mere mortals like me. Is Mr Potato Head the best they can do?
Gorn for all money, they are.
Disunity is Death.
Dead Mal Walking, as one of the fishwraps had it.
There are few finer sights in the Miracle of Democracy than Tories squabbling amongst each other and tearing themselves apart.
After going through the exact same thing during the J.Gillard/Kevin07 Era, the Pinko's must be gloating over the bloodbath.
All good, clean, fun.

the days of the Ol' Red Finger have gone away

Comrades,


It was somewhat saddening to hear of the demise of the seat of Port Adelaide, which has now be redistributed into extinction by the requirement to slash South Australia's representation in the House of Representatives from 11 seats to ten, on account of a complete lack of population growth compared to the rest of the nation [NSW, in contrast, has 47 seats].
The Federal Electoral Commissioner sat down with old mates, the South Australian Surveyor-General and the South Australian Auditor-General, and after banging their heads together for a while and looking at a helluva lot of maps, determined that Port Adelaide just had to be abolished, even though it's been rock solid Pinko since being established in 1949.
To fit about 105,000 voters into a seat without too much gerrymandering, the redistribution leaves Boothby as the only marginal seat in the state.
So, for all intents and purposes, the vote in the South Australian rustbelt from now on will be of very little or no consequence at all at Federal Elections - and the state will be simply dismissed by major party politicians as a given.
Sorry folks, but there will be no pork-barrelling or fresh French submarines for you anymore - none, ever.
It's a only a shame for me because I have fond memories of the late Dr Alan Finger, who was the perennial Communist Party candidate for the seat of Port Adelaide, safe in the knowledge that the Commo's would get their best vote there among the ship-builders, stevedores and warehouse workers, even though he knew he'd never have a snowflakes of ever getting elected.
Dr Finger was the much-respected decades-long head of Adelaide Hospital's Venereal Diseases Clinic.
Nominative determinism at its finest - this was a Commo who poked all the orifices of sickly mad rooters every day of his professional life for 40 years.
While all the time in public service, he espoused his straight Marxist-Leninist [he was no fan of Stalin] rhetoric on the stump when elections rolled around, and he had a strong personal following and fine reputation among the downtrodden proletariat as the best pox doctor in all of South Australia.
But, no one seemed to have any problem at all with the fact that if Doc Finger had cured you of the clap on the public purse, you would probably not have much hesitation in voting for him, no matter his political stripe.
That's proper democracy, right there.
When I was a mere child, I remember my father perusing the paper when the list of candidates for up-coming elections was still published in the press [as political party affiliations were not allowed on the ballot paper, just the name] and saying with faint amusement "oh, I see Dr Finger is running for the Commo's again..."
But the days of the Ol' Red Finger have gone away - a long, long time ago - and now the memory fades to almost complete oblivion with the wiping of Port Adelaide off the electoral map, so it must be the end of some kind of era, surely?

Enough of that nostalgia, let's do some more yearning for the past in downtown Hobart and consider something I pretend to know a little bit about - when the arts and the Miracle of Democracy collide.
It's always great fun!
You've gotta love the Lord Mayor of Hobart, Alderman Ron Christie, being given a slap-down by the Tasmanian Chamber of Business & Commerce for being a "throwback to the 1950's", after saying rude and reactionary things about David Walsh's DARK MOFO thingo, that brings in real honky dollars by the bucketful from odd, strange, arty-party types from the mainland.
And talk about Hobart City Council being over-represented to buggery by a swill of freeloaders.
With just 19,128 valid ballots cast in the last non-compulsorary election for 12 alderpersons [a turn-out of just 51.7%] - each local Govt. pollie in that neck of the woods has little more than fifteen hundred active punters to represent.
And all the alderpersons are either Greens or Independents - the major parties just couldn't be bothered with it, as it's such a non-event.
Christie reckons hundreds of fools leaping nude into the Derwent on the winter solstice definitely does not "preserve the unique history and beauty of Hobart".
Fair enough, you might say - goose-pimpled soggy bottoms, pert nipples on sagging breasts and shriveled old todgers with nutsacks forced back up into the scrotal cavity by the freezing cold is never a good look.
Maybe next year, just to liven things up a bit, they could beat each other with birch sticks in some S&M action before they dive in?
But I digress; Cranky Christie obviously hates all these cashed-up weirdo strangers coming to town as he doesn't like their "unhealthy culture" and doesn't want Hobart to go "down the same path as the larger internationals like Rome, Barcelona and Paris where citizens are screaming enough is enough — go home, don't destroy us", and is pining for a return to the good ol' days of "Slowbart".
Hobart and the "larger internationals", eh?
I've got not idea where he got the "Lord" in Mayor from, but Riled-Up Ronnie is very small beer indeed, up against one of Tasmania's richest men, the entirely 100% eccentric Walsh.
I've been to his architecturally extraordinary Museum of Old and New Art which houses his considerable personal multi-million dollar art collection on the banks of the mighty Derwent, and I've read his autobiography A Bone Of Fact - both of which I can recommend highly.
For decades, Walsh has been, by his own admission, obsessed with ending the evil and corrupt Farrell family's casino monopoly in Tasmania, and building a 7-star "high-rollers only" hotel/casino next door to his Museum - he reckons simply to fund the joint that's costing him an absolute poultice to run and remove the admission fee for non-Tasmanians - and that's where his interest in politics begins and ends, because he don't need no Govt. funding for Y'arts.
He's paying for the whole shooting match out of his own pocket.
Walsh is one of the very few independently wealthy people who truly could not give-a-fuck about who says what about him, let alone what they might think of his taste in art.
He has said nothing about the brouhaha; he's a loyal Tasmanian and would dismiss Alderperson Christie - who's up for re-election in October, btw - as beneath his dignity, let alone worthy of his consideration.
If he did give interviews, Walsh would probably call Christie out for being the golden-chain bedecked backward redneck clueless philistine dickwad local politician that he is.
Not meaning to be "looksist" or anything, but, I mean, just take a gander at the bloke - I rest my case.

[The Rt.Hon. Lord Mayor of Hobart, Alderman Ron Christie]

Summit of the Century!

Comrades,

The last time the Korean Peninsular was mentioned in these scribblings, it was the one page letter from DJ Trump! on White House letter-head to the Pyongyang Palace calling the whole thing off.
Whappen?
Obviously, that wasn't worth the paper it was printed on, so the 'Singapore Declaration' will be worth even less.
There is no mention of cheeseburgers, Choco Pies, or Diet Coke's, in the joint communique, so it can't be for real, must be fake news.
It's quite ironic really that the reality television game show 'Summit of the Century!' should take place in an autocratic police city-state, where the show of the Miracle of Democracy is a mere sham, and anyone not towing Lee Kuan Yew's hard-right People's Action Party line won't see outside the four walls of a Singaporean jailhouse for quite a time.
Then you've got a dead-set certified 24-carat card-carrying despot with a very long family history in the authoritarian caper in Fatboy KIm, coming up against a POTUS who is hell bent on destroying the institutions of the Miracle of Democracy in The Home of the Brave, in a bid to hang onto his illegitimate and tenuous grip on power.
On one hand you've got "Little Rocket Man" who loves nothing more than disposing of his enemies execution-style with a rocket propelled grenade, and a Leader of the Free World who pardons his criminal mates, and even has legal advice to the tune that he can pardon himself, even though he has done absolutely nothing wrong. Nothing.
The utter lack of credibility from this particular pair of outrageous buffoons is simply breathtaking.

Never mind that The Donald just cannot resist some lovin'-up for the television camera's, or that Fatboy can't resist playing him like a fiddle, the best yarn to come out of the whole sad schemozzle is the unconfirmed report that Mr Chairman bought his own toilet with him in the cargo bay of the Air China Boeing 747 he flew in on [an Ilyushin-62 and Airbus A330 were also flown in as decoys.]
No ordinary bog-hole for him, oh no siree, he required the one that is perfectly moulded to The Glorious Leader's not insubstantial arse plumbed into the Presidential Suite in the St. Regis Hotel Singapore, so he could take a dump in the manner to which he is accustomed.
All class.

Of course, as a Drinker for Disarmament, I'm all for getting rid of The Bomb for all time, but why not go the whole hog here and de-militarize the entire Korean Peninsular?
That'd solve the 65-year-old armistice problem instantly.
Yeah sure. When you tot up the standing armies of both North and South, along with the reserves and various paramilitaries, you've got about 1.6 million military personnel on the Peninsular, and that's not counting the 23,468 US troops permanently stationed in South Korea. Abandoning that in the name of world peace would put a whole lot of people out of work.
And what Trump's hard-core supporter base back in The States makes of all of this is anyone's guess; you'd have to think that the 'deplorables' wouldn't know where or what Korea was, or care, as they want the USA out of Foreign Policy altogether, unless it involves building Big Beautiful Walls to keep the hordes of job-stealing murdering rapists out.
Out!

Fed up with the whole meaningless circus, I decided to spin some of DJ!'s remarks to reporters post the Summit of the Century into a word cloud, to see what it spat out.
Normally, you can quickly see the main point folks are trying to make, but here is the classic scattergun approach; bamboozle the other negotiating side with a vocabulary of gobbledygook and meaningless gibberish - the only thing the cloud does reveal is that the Trumpotus doesn't know whether he's coming or going.
God help the poor Korean translator in the one-on-one talks, who might as well have done the spinning of the finger thing indicating The Donald's off-his-rockerness...and translate as "I've got absolutely no idea what he's saying, Glorious Leader, but this turkey is clearly fucked-in-the-face", or whatever that phrase is in Korean.

Photo: Doug Mills/NYT.
Word Cloud: Crazy Craves.

the Irish & the Miracle of Democracy

Comrades,

% of Yes vote by constituency, abortion referendum 24 May 2018. Source: Irish Referendum Commission.

Comrades,

The Irish seem to have a fairly laissez-faire attitude toward the Miracle of Democracy.
They have no independent Electoral Commission - they've even had a Constitutional Convention to try to set one up, with no result.
Elections are currently run by a higgeldy-piggeldy collection of Govt. Depts and agencies that think they have a finger in the democratic pie; even the Garda have the responsibility of policing the polling stations.
So, every time they want to get a referendum going, a brand new Referendum Commission has to be set up each time to run the show, charged with presenting both sides of the argument evenhandedly without fear or favour.
And they also have an odd history of referendum voting.
Everyone knows the Irish went rainbow and approved of same-sex marriage [which required constitutional change] long before Australia had the entirely unnecessary and stoopid "postal survey" just to change the Marriage Act, that could have been easily done by a simple majority vote in the Parliament.
And still we have this strange notion of the Irish as a backward conservative society - wrong! - they approved of all sexes shagging each other with gay abandon within the institution of marriage by 62.07% with not a single constituency voting NO, while Australia approved it by 61.6%, with a very substantial NO vote in New South Wales.
And then think again -- Ireland decriminalised homosexuality in 1993, a year before most of Australia, with Tassy holding out until man-on-man rum buggery and similar acts of depravity were finally made legal in 1997 - that's only twenty years ago.
And yet, before 2012, children in Ireland had no legal entity, let alone any status, and essentially had the same rights as cattle, before the 35th amendment to the Irish Constitution was voted in, to put the rug-rats under the umbrella of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. After a round of legal challenges, it didn't become law until 2015.
So, it strikes me as rather odd that, until a couple of years ago, the unborn in Ireland had more or less the same rights as adults, but as soon as they popped out of the womb, they had absolutely nothing until they turned 18, and were legally regarded as the chattels of their parents, with which the State had no right to interfere, except under "exceptional circumstances".
The old Irish Constitutional code even went so far as to define children's rights as "indescriptible".
In this one, it was a vote to repeal the 8th Amendment to the Constitution which was approved by voters 35 years ago -- abolishing s.40.3 (3) "The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right. This subsection shall not limit freedom to travel between the State and another state. This subsection shall not limit freedom to obtain or make available, in the State, subject to such conditions as may be laid down by law, information relating to services lawfully available in another state" and replacing it with "Provision may be made by law for the regulation of termination of pregnancy".
Back in the early '80's the Irish were clearly operating on the NIMBY principal, but feel free to do it elsewhere.
The referendum question was effectively, in a round-about way, "Do you approve of provision being made by law for the regulation of termination of pregnancies?"
While the YES vote won more easily than expected at just over 66%, and the turnout was fairly healthy in a non-compulsory referendum - 2,159,655 punters showed up at the polls -- 36% of electors were no-shows, taking the "don't care" or "couldn't be bothered" position.
Let's face it, the once totally dominant and all powerful Roman Catholic Church has not been getting good press lately, having world-wide credibility and hypocrisy issues surrounding the child buggering priests protection racket, so given Ireland's track record in this grey area, the NO vote had a lot of difficulty taking the moral high ground.
Forget my personal view that the grubby hands of Govt. have no place in the sexual proclivities or reproductive rights of anyone.
As far as I'm concerned, folks can get it on in anyway they can as much as they like, and whether or not they wish, want or need to spawn issue is entirely up to them - that's beside the point.
For mine, the YES vote is still on the shifting sands of time, regardless -- all they've really done is given Govt's. the power to make provision under the law regarding the termination of pregnancies.
What happens in the unlikely event of a hard-line anti-abortion Govt. getting up via the Miracle of Democracy some-time down the track?
Work all that out, if you will, and yr better than me.
Here endeth the lesson in curious Irish Constitutional Law.

Speaking of credibility and hypocrisy, the timing of "Super Saturday" [five by-elections on the same day, never before seen in the history of Federation] was an act of utter utter political bastardry pure and simple, so so typical of Tories.
Never mind the bald-faced two-fingered "up you, Pinko's!" of it being scheduled on the same weekend as the ALP National Conference or that it defies the accepted principal and logic of never holding elections during the school holidays - people can see straight through that for what it is - just pity the poor good burghers of Braddon, Fremantle, Longman, Mayo and Perth, who have to suffer through a nine week by-election campaign.
No one is saying "Damn the High Court!", but nine weeks?!
It's just postponing the inevitable; the coalition won't even go to the time and trouble of running candidates in seats they can't win, and it won't be hard to run the ex-Xenophite, Rebekha Sharkie, out of town in the Adelaide Hills, and replace her with Alexander Downer's arch-conservative daughter Georgina - yet another bloody lawyer, and diplomat.
I know nothing of 38-year-old Georgie, save that she comes from "old Adelaide money", which is just about as perfect a credential as you can get to become a Tory MP.
Her great-grandfather, Sir John ["bull-headed, and rather thick-necked"], was twice a premier of South Australia who was also elected as a Protectionist Party candidate to the very first Australian Senate, but got jack of Melbourne and went back to Adelaide.
Her grandfather, Sir Alick, was the Minister for Wogs in a Menzies government, and finished up with the top diplomatic cherry as Australia's High Commissioner to London.
Her father, Alexander AC, was the shortest-lived Liberal opposition leader ever [8 months] but Australia's longest serving foreign minister [11 years 8 months] and most recently, just like grand-pops, was also Australia's High Commissioner to the Court of St James.
Just a shame they don't have any of the charisma of any of the people in Dynasty, none of them.
Little wonder then, that Georgina reportedly has the Downer knack of putting their foot in their mouths and rubbing people up the wrong way, and her main aim in life appears to be becoming the next "Iron Lady" -- you can see where she's from, and where she's at.
With the recent spotlight on Royalty and to paraphrase the words of the Great Gough "God Save The Queen, because nothing will save the current Prime Minister".

no Nobel Peace Prize for nobody

Comrades,

No-one was ever going to go to Singapore.
Leaving aside the fact that I can't see Fat Boy Kim ever getting on no lil' airplane, when he's got that famous British Racing Green armoured train to get around in, "Mr Chairman" was never going to let DJ Trump get away with any kind of grand-standing, let alone score any political points, whatsoever.
Nothing in that for the Glorious Leader; so no Nobel Peace Prize for nobody.
Fat Boy was never going to agree to a "complete de-nuclearisation of the Korean Peninsular" without a binding non-aggression pact and more rare vintage wines and Choco Pies for the Pyongyang Palace.
It's so easy to forget that the POTUS is now onto his second Secretary-of-State in that fat buffoon Mike Pompeo, after the sensible-in-the-context, Rex Tillerson, lasted just 427 days in the job before he was so completely flabbergasted by the utter non-existence of any foreign policy agenda, there was no point in going on.
Pompeo's people in State who are on the ground had to break the news to him that nothing was doing in the way of any sort of concessions, and then he had to tell DJ! that it was no deal.
And of course, if there's no deal in it, any mild interest The Donald may have had in foreign policy is immediately lost.
It was all a hastily cobbled together sham to make DJ! look good domestically, in keeping with his grand "getting things done" mantra.
Oh well, cheesburgers, Diet Coke's, and a round of golf anyone?
In any case, the communique that the Trumpotus has sent via the US Postal Service to North Korea is not diplomatic [only the "tremendous anger and open hostility" bit is]; it's more like a fawning love letter..."a wonderful dialogue building up" a "beautiful gesture" "very much looking forward to being there" and "please don't hesitate to call, 24/7"...a pleading remember me? I'm still here!

In any case, who needs the real folks to turn up in good ol' down town Singers when they're both play acting mannequins anyway - anyone can pop on one of these you bewt silicon numbers [and by the way, I want some of those t-shirts for my mates in the Drinkers for Disarmament movement] and look the part, with you-know-who looking over their shoulders.
All you need is a Mr Ping of China mask to complete the quadrella.

It might not be the End of The World as we know it, but it's sensible to keep yr head down, and scan the horizon for mushroom clouds in the morning.

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.