the rose

Some say love, it is a river that drowns the tender reed.
Some say love, it is a razor that leaves your soul to bleed.
Some say love, it is a hunger, an endless aching need.
I say love, it is a flower, and you it's only seed.
It's the heart, afraid of breaking, that never learns to dance.
It's the dream, afraid of waking, that never takes a chance.
It's the one who won't be taken, who cannot seem to give.
And the soul, afraid of dyin', that never learns to live.
When the night has been too lonely, and the road has been too long,
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong,
Just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snows,
Lies the seed, that with the sun's love, in the spring becomes the rose.

Found the lyrics here.

This song always cracks me up.

on the care and feeding of plants...

Over at Troppo, I've been following with interest The Great (Terri Schiavo) Debate. I was even driven to uttering a comment. It is reproduced here for those who want to debate this comment with me:

(1) So she's in a persistent vegetative state (PVS). Let's assume this means she's ceased being a human being and that she is now a gendered plant. Why deliberately stop watering and feeding a plant which is loved and wanted by someone? Because it's not human? Who says this is ethical?

(2) So she's a plant. Is the plant suffering? If not, see (1).

(3) Is there irrefutable evidence that before becoming a plant she has indicated she would want to be allowed to die if in a PVS? If not, there is doubt. If there is doubt, see (1).

Where are there any problems?

Why must she be denied the basic rights of a plant (i.e. access to food and water)?

The only question I can see is this: Who should bear the cost of the accommodation, care and feeding of this plant?

The answer is clear: Those who want her to be kept alive.

Everything else is agenda-driven rhetoric. Perhaps even my comments are nothing more than agenda-driven rhetoric. Perhaps all there is is agenda-driven rhetoric... Who knows...

So many questions, so few bullets... ;-)

Ok, dudes and dudettes, let's have at it! :-)

UPDATE (March 31): It's over. Terry Schiavo has died. If indeed there is a soul, and if souls need to rest in peace, then I wish for the soul we used to know as Terri Schiavo to rest in peace. And if there is a god, then to he/she/it I say a heart felt "f#ck you". There... I think I've got closure now...

sophistication redux...

In yet another global outbreak of sophistication, it's becoming very trendoid to use the word "redux" wherever and whenever possible. From what I can make out, its use identifies the user as a person who has a great aversion to speaking plainly. Such persons, I can only guess, affect this linguistic behaviour in order to expose and/or confound those who are
"not one of us, daaahhhling..."

Now, I'm clearly on the outer (having, over the years, failed every known test of sophistication), so I got sick of not having a clue, and I did a global Google using the phrase "what does redux mean". D'oh!

Only about ten people in the English speaking world have ever had the temerity to ask this question on websites which have allowed Google's spiders to crawl all over them. (yuck!!!)

From the results I distilled the following meanings:

A fancy-pants way of saying it's a redo, a do-over.

Brought back, revisited.

Indicates a repeat.

Actually it´s taken from the movie title "Apocalipse Now r.e.d.u.x", which stands for a remake / updated version.

Redux is the re-released version of Apocalypse Now with 40 minutes of additional footage that Francis Ford Coppola had to leave out of the original.

And so now you too can be one of us, daaahhhling...

Now, do be a good person and go away and look up the word "meretricious", daaahhhling...

words can affect you...

I was visiting some of the blogs of visitors to this blog when I came accross these words on Twain's blog:

isn't it amazing how a person's words can affect you?
just a few words can just mean so much and may just change your mood for the whole day...
sometimes, it just changes the whole of your life and your perspectives...

So I got to thinking... I am one who is often very affected by others' words, yet I'm so careless in the way I use them. By that I mean, I rarely consider the effect my words might have on another. I guess that means I'm inconsiderate. Hmmm... Might have give this some more thought...

shhhh... I'm thinking...

...and that's ALWAYS bad news...

I've been thinking about bigots and non-bigots.

Bigots have ossified beliefs and ideas. It goes without saying they never question the "rightness" of their beliefs and ideas. And it follows that therefore they are incapable of any intellectual evolution. They are incapable of learning from their experience. They're stuck, usually and explicably, in ignorance or worse, stupidity.

Non-bigots are capable of reviewing and changing their beliefs and ideas, and thereby, they can deal with issues in a different way now than they might have previously. In other words, they can learn; they can evolve intellectually.

It also stands to reason that we're all, to a greater or lesser degree, bigoted about a number of issues and ideas.

This led me to thinking about blogging. In particular, my own insane style of "let-it-all-hang-out" blogging.

In trying to be a good little non-bigot, my blogging tends to be messy, cathartic, therapeutic, and evolutionary. It also tends to be repetitious. A bunch of key issues or ideas keeps getting brought up, mulled-over, and re-worked, ad infinitum. Each of these issues and ideas is a perpetual "work in progress". None can ever be finished or complete because learning and evolving can never be finished or complete.

This presents some problems for the reader of this style of blog...

The posts are chronologically hierarchal i.e. the latest evolution (version) of the blogger's issues and ideas are at the top of the blog whilst the earlier (and often contradictory) "versions" of the same issues and ideas are buried in the usually unread archives.

But evolution and learning is not so tidy. The latest belief or idea is not necessarily a superior belief or idea. Intellectual evolution and learning is a cybernetic process. It's trial and error. Like a drunk trying to stagger home, erratically. The drunk usually gets home, but his path is not an elegant one.

So, I'm sorry if my posts are repititious and if my latest post is less "correct" than a previous one, but such is the nature of staggering drunkenly towards home...

Using this metaphor of the drunk trying to get home, if you think you are "sober" and you already know the "right" way home, then perhaps instead of secretly snickering at my plight supercilliously, you might like to use the comments facility of this blog to point me in the right direction, otherwise, as the drunk might so eloquently put it, "Fuck you!"

yes, I know I'm nuts....

I'm nuts. I know. I'm nuts because I'm not "sane". That's how nuts is defined - anything outside the bell curve of "sanity" is "insanity". Easy, yeah?

But the clever bastards don't actually define sanity. For instance, they'll diagnose you as "paranoid" without actually establishing beyond doubt whether your fears are valid or justified. Now, THAT's nuts, but don't tell THEM that, or you'll be guilty of another crime against the thought police.

So, what is sanity? Well, it has to do with the bell curve of normalcy of behaviour.
It's the democracy of psychology.

And we all know where democarcy's taking us, don't we?

It's taking us to wherever the majority wants to go. But what if, by an entirely different definition of sanity, the majority is nuts? Well then, under a psychological democracy, the lunatics get to run the asylum.... Does that resonate? Hmmm???

And what's sanity got to do with political democracy? Everything or nothing. Depends on how you define political sanity...

john pilger speaks to hyde park rally...

Speaking in Sydney, Australia, March 20, 2005, at a rally to commemorate the second anniversary of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, John Pilger said that his compatriots who opposed the invasion should be proud of their achievements and those of millions like them.

Transcript of his speech >>>

And whilst we're on the subject of the worldwide protests on March 20, there is a neat photo here taken in Heroes Place, Budapest, Hungary.

lies, damn lies and statistics...

Mike Tressider reckons he's got the statisticians' numbers.

Now go figure >>>

dirty deeds, done dirt cheap...

Willam Arkin published a book recently titled Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs and Operations in the 9/11 World.

And now someone has gone to great lengths to forge a Defense Intelligence Agency cable in an attempt to discredit him as having been a spy for Saddam Hussein.

Full story >>>

I particularly enjoyed Ember Swift, Alistair Hulett (in paricular the songs from the album "Red Clydeside") and a band which originated in the Blue Mountains, Method.

rachel corrie...

On March 16, 2003, Rachel Corrie, peace activist, was brutally bulldozed to death by the Israeli army in Palestine. If you want to understand a little of what Rachel was all about,
read this >>>

Photo borrowed from the Rachel Corrie Memorial Website.

when the war music stops...

By Luciana Bohne, Online Journal Contributing Writer

A day will come when this crazed war music will stop, and the American people will hear the judgment that the Germans heard at Nuremberg—that, in Justice Robert Jackson's words, they had supported a regime which had committed "acts which have been regarded as criminal since the time of Cain." They will also be astonished to hear that, although they thought they were free, they had in fact been terrorized and enslaved by their own government in order to follow in Cain's footsteps—as the German people heard.

Read the whole artice >>>

(Compliments of DS)

water, water, nowhere...

From disappearing lakes and dwindling rivers to military threats over shared resources, water is a cause for deep concern in many parts of the world.

Read all about it >>> (Compliments of DS.)

This blog has lots of posts about water problems (just follow the links).

it'll all be worth it in the long run...

Plowing Iraq for profits >>> (Link compliments of DS.)

And this, from an earlier post >>>

Dare I shout "YANKEE GO HOME!!!" ???

some GOOD news...

From an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer by William J. Kole:

Two years after the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein, the coalition is unraveling amid mounting casualties and kidnappings that have stoked anti-war sentiment and sapped leaders' resolve to keep troops in harm's way.

and

Thirty-eight countries have provided troops in Iraq at one point or another. But 14 nations have permanently withdrawn since the March 2003 invasion, and today's coalition stands at 24. Excluding U.S. forces, there are 22,750 foreign soldiers still in Iraq.
The scramble to get out has taken the multinational force from a high of about 300,000 soldiers in the region early in 2003 to 172,750 and falling. About 150,000 U.S. troops shoulder the bulk of the responsibility and suffer the most casualties.

Read the whole article >>>

(Article found by DS)

the US/China/Japan menage à trois...

Tom Engelhardt's journalistic blog, TomDispatch, has a very good article on Chalmers Johnson's analysis of the economic ramifications of US/Asia trade relations. Introducing Johnson's piece, Tom says:

Seldom do you find a piece that tries to put East Asia together, laying out for us, in particular, the explosive nature of the U.S./Japan/China triangular relationship, which in various combinations has in the past plunged us into bloody war .

I found the following comment by Johnson to be particularly elucidating and sobering:

Refusing to pay for its profligate consumption patterns and military expenditures through taxes on its own citizens, the United States is financing these outlays by going into debt to Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and India.

This situation has become increasingly unstable as the U.S. requires capital imports of at least $2 billion per day to pay for its governmental expenditures. Any decision by East Asian central banks to move significant parts of their foreign exchange reserves out of the dollar and into the euro or other currencies in order to protect themselves from dollar depreciation would produce the mother of all financial crises.

Read the whole article >>>

(Article found by DS.)

mark mark's words....

Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life. It is far better that you fear the media, for they will steal your Honor. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse.
Mark Twain. (Compliments of DS)

There are many humorous things in the world, among them the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages. Mark Twain (Found here.)

here, kitty, kitty...

 


Love it! Found it here.

ugly is an accusation...

Rosemary Lewis (Heckler, SMH, March 8, 2005) admits to having something in common with good ol' Camilla:

Three cheers for Camilla! I think she's fabulous. She's committed the most unforgivable sin, and she might just get away with it. Being divorced? No. Slipping her toes into Diana's lace-ups? No. Wanting to be a princess when she's got a face like a walrus? Bingo.

Read more >>>

ranting again...

Consumerism. The economy is ruled by consumerism.

The transition from ethnic subsistance cultures to "The Modern Lifestyle".

The economics-driven wars and "interventions" to obtain by force resources the Modern Lifestylers "must have". The puppet "democracies" they enforce upon them in order to facilitate this.

The rampant out-of-controlness of globalised capitalism and the utterly insane, unfair, egocentric, greed-driven world this will create before it implodes into an economic, environmental and cultural/ethnic disaster of monumental proportions, and the death of billions that will result from this.

The way Modern Lifestylers just don't give a flying fuck about any of this as long as they're enjoying and enhancing their utterly unsustainable, exploitative and globally destructive But-Oh-So-Glitzy-Lifestyle.

The way they are making it ever-more impossible for people to live in an independently subsistant way. The way the the puppeteers of the Modern Lifestylers have astutely forseen that out there, in the real world, many in the disenfranchised majority will resort to "terrorism" and thus they have declared war on "terrorism" rather than address the causes of it, knowing, as they do, that it is what they are visiting upon these people that is breeding the "terrorism"

I can see so much that bothers me greatly yet I lack the academic and literary skills to express these things in well-thought-out or well-reasoned ways and so I stop blathering and just shut the fuck up... and then I get depressed... and then I get mad again... and I rant some more... and then I shut the fuck up again... and then I get depressed again...

You get the picture...

I'll never believe him again...

I was starting to feel sorry for HoWARd (for foreign readers, that's our Prime Minister). Everyone was always slagging off at the poor little fella. It was starting to look a bit biased.

So when he announced that he was sending another 450 troops to protect Japanese military engineers rebuilding infrastructue in Iraq, I thought (silly me) that I'd give him the benefit of the doubt.

Since then, the officer in charge of the Japanese military engineers has said they did not need protection by the Australian troops.

I've decided that a Japanese army officer is more believable than our Prime Minister. I will never believe HoWARd ever again.

My apologies to Suki and Tim Dunlop for having doubted their judgement.

bin laden defeats america...

One way to defeat a people is to drive them crazy. The Americans have gone stark raving mad. They are no longer in touch with reality. And since it can be argued that what toppled the Yanks into the abyss of psychosis was the 9/11 attacks by bin Laden's maniacs, it follows that he has, ipso facto, defeated the Americans.

To get a good sense of just how insane the Amercans have become, take a few minutes to read this. (compliments of DS)

Of course Democrats in America will accuse me of generalising too much, but I dismiss their hot breathy protests by pointing to their empty town squares. Where are the anti-Bush demonstrations? Where are the protesters? Why do they not lay siege to Washington with tent cities full of protesters? Where is their massive display of Peaceful People Power? If what is happening is so wrong (and it is) where are the 48%? Why are they not in the streets shouting "No More Years!!" "No More War!" "Troops out! Bush out!".

All I hear is the depressed and subdued mutterings of demoralised Democrats. By their inaction they are complicit. I say 48% of the people hitting the streets with placards would bring any government to its knees! This failure to protest is inexcusable!!! I am very angry with the American people for allowing their mad government to continue to govern. If that's an example of "freedom" and "democracy" you can blow it out your ass.

My message to America:
Go fuck yourselves and stop fucking the world, you lunatics!!!

an open letter to condi...

This is worth a read... It's by Lloyd Axworthy, president of the University of Winnipeg and a former Canadian foreign minister.

(Compliments of DS)

party time for the five mile high club...

It's laughable that I, a person totally uneducated in the fields of economics and social science should even dare to have an opinion. But I do. I have many opinions. For me, opinions just keep happening. I think it's called opining. So here then is another bunch of opinions I'm not qualified to have, trying hard to fly in formation...

The economy. It's become the master of all and we are its slaves. We're led to believe that there is only one viable model for an economy - the capitalist model. That's the square outside of which we're not allowed to think. The neocons don't want us to. More precisely, the Big Fat Capitalists don't want us to and the neocons are just a bunch of mercenary pundits and facilitators toadying up to the Big Fat Capitalists. They know where the money is.

Neo-feudalism would be a better term for what these blood-sucking vampires have in mind. And like all master-slave relationships, when the master is not happy, the slaves suffer. So we have to have a happy economy so that the Big Fat Capitalists are kept happy. Sadly, this is a model that is doomed to crash and therefore it must lead not just to unhappiness but disaster. And now that it's about to go global, the disaster will be global in scope and totally devastating in magnitude.

Why must it crash? Well let's use the metaphor of a jumbo jet hired for a massive in-flight orgy by The Five Mile High Club. The members are party animals par excellence.

So there they are, having fun, five miles up in their jumbo. They eat, they drink, they party. All is well. But this is a party with a difference. This party must not end. It must not stop. The plane must not be allowed to descend and land. The rules for this party do not allow for a gradual descent and a soft landing. That would be the end of the party that must not end.

Oh, there's enough food, drink and Viagra on board, but the jumbo will eventually run out of fuel and then it's "watch how a jumbo flies exactly like a brick doesn't" - from five miles up... (Apologies to Douglas Adams.)

No, this metaphor is not about fossil fuels running out (although that does have our pilots worried...). No, the fuel in this metaphor is the fuel that keeps a capitalist economy flying high - profits.

Profits can only be generated by expansion or greater "efficiency". Stagnation is death. No profits - no income for the Big Fat Capitalists. No profits - the herd of shareholders moves on to some greener pasture. Someone saw the problems with a herd of shareholders free to roam, so the WTO went on a fence-building spree to stop the stampeding of capital. Now, the herd of shareholders MUST be fed in situ, or the people will be punished! Jawohl, Herr Kapitalist!

"Arbeit Macht Frei" is the mantra of the neo-fascist global regime The Big Fat Capitalists are putting the finishing touches to. But how will work make you free? Well, only if you work for someone who is getting rich from your toil. Self employed? Forget it. You might think you're self employed, but a huge chunk of your earnings goes right back to The Big Capitalist Pigs. You're really working for them and they make money out of everything you do. And they control the economy on which you depend.

"Ha! I'll do the subsistence thing" you say? Oh yeah? You'll need a big chunk of money to buy enough land on which to subsist. That will take years out of your life. And then you'd better be selling something to pay for the land tax and other govenment fees and charges, and as soon as you sell something you will be taxed and that tax will eventually go into the pockets of a Big Fat Capitalist.

You see, if you did manage to somehow establish pure subsistence there would be no Big Fat Capitalists making money from what you do. And they have decreed that this must not be allowed to happen. This is why whole farming communities which for centuries had happily and successfully subsisted on the crops they grew have now been forced trash those crops to grow cash crops for corporations. They sell the cash crops and Big Fat Capitalists make money. And now they have to buy their food and Big Fat Capitalists make money. Their farming methods have been "modernised" and now they have to buy fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides, and Big Fat Capitalists make money.

Can you see why we must have a "developing world"? "Development" is how we crush their independent lifestyle and force them into a dependence lifestyle which intravenously feeds The Big Fat Capitalists their lifeblood of money money money. Oh, and with a stroke of a WTO pen, a Big Fat Capitalist just bought the land they used to subsist on and now they will be "integrated" whether they like it or not. And, shock, horror, some do not like it one little bit...

But whatever you do, don't mention the word "freedom fighter". Those stinking terrorists will be terrorised into submission. And if not submission, then oblivion. And the communities giving rise to such heinous distortions of the concept of freedom will be collateralized! You mark George Bush's words!

By the way, "war on terror"? Guess what! Big Fat Capitalists are making hundreds of billions. And whose money goes to pay these Big Fat Capitalists? Why, it's yours! Yep. Your money is used to kill people objecting violently to what is being done to them and the Big Fat Capitalists are laughing all the way to the bank - with your money.

So that's how the jumbo is kept airborne. But it's an unsustainable situation. Consumerism will trash this world, and when it does, the economy must fail and the jumbo must crash. This is the bit that the Glitzmeisters of consumerism don't want to know about. They just dream of an ever-glitzier world without end, amen. But they are dangerously deluded party animals on a jumbo which is doomed...

The trouble is, I somehow got hijacked and chucked into the cargo hold of that jumbo and now I'm up there with them....

Bugger...

consumer power...

The following post started life as a comment I made in the previous post. I've expanded it and made it a separate post because of its different subject matter but also because I'm not sure how many people actually read the comments. If what I'm doing is irritating, please let me know.

I think the consumer's power is immense. If we get organised we can control what goods and services will succeed/fail.

The consumers can even crash the global economy. And I think the sooner the economy is crashed, the better. Yes, sadly, millions would starve, but if it isn't brought to its knees soon and a whole new social system (not ruled by shareholder power) is invented, if this murderous, rapacious global capitalism is allowed to run its course, millions will be killed in trade-driven wars and subsequently the planet will be trashed by the time this system implodes as it eventually must in the not too distant future IMHO, and then BILLIONS will die. The ruling elite won't give a toss.

It will literally hit our grandchildren. So, the options, as I see them, are (1) we put ourselves into voluntary hardship now via a consumer-driven revolution and maybe even die of starvation, but set the scene for a new socio-economic system to evolve, or (2) we fuck our grandchildren and their whole world, bigtime.

But I'm only depressing myself with these nightmarish scenarios.

Everybody is too busy having one more party and convincing themselves that "tomorrow" some magic answer will be found or that God will save His children. Yeah right. We're going all the way to the end of the line.

I can hear their cries now.. "God, why hast thou forsaken us?" Of course their priests will convince them that it is punishment for the sins of their grandfathers and in a way that will be utterly true. Such is the nature of cause and effect that the ignorant and superstitious mistake it for the hand of a God who doesn't even exist. Hallelujah...

Yeah, I know I'm ranting. Disturbed minds do that... [/rant]

YANKEE GO HOME !!!

Elsewhere, deep in the comments column of an earlier post I made this comment:

Pity the Yanks have no idea... Then again, do we blame the Yanks or the rest of the world. If the rest of the world stood up to those fuckers, the Yanks wouldn't be able to do zip about it.

I hereby launch the global anti-American revolution.

Everybody now, repeat after me: "YANKEE GO HOME !!!"

Tattoo it on Howard's forehead. Skywrite it. Graffiti it. Email it. Blog it.

"YANKEE GO HOME !!!"

And when the Gestapo raids your house, shout "FUCK OFF!"

I'm sick of living in a Nazi AmeriKKKan dominated world!

I hope you keep dropping in here Gringo... At least until the Gestapo shut me down.

God, they're going to have to kill* a lot of us...

*Note to Big Brother: I am not armed, I will not resist arrest, but you will need to kill me before I will confess to something which I did not do.

the devil made me do it...

Did I do it? And if I did it, am I responsible?

Am I cause or am I effect?

If I'm effect, then who/what made me do it? Society? My upbringing? My socio-economic circumstances? A chemical? The absence of a chemical? My genes, My friends? My partner? My shrink? God? The devil? A voice in my head? You? Did you make me do it? Who made me do it? Who's responsible?

What's my point? Well I'm getting dizzy trying to figure out who was responsible for what.

Do we hold the driver of the stolen car being chased by police responsible for speeding, losing control, crashing, and killing his two friends, or do we hold the police responsible? Or is society responsible? Is the driver's socio-economic circumstance responsible. Who "made" him do it?

Was Osama responsible, or did the West make him do it? Are the Americans responsible or did Osama make them do it?

Is the Palestinian terrorist responsible or did the Israelis make him do it? Are the Israelis responsible or did the Palestinian terrorists make them do it?

Is John Howard responsible or did the Yanks, Big Business, the economy, God, et cetera, make him do it?

Can I go out and just go berserk and kill lots of people in a fit or rage and then blame Vietnam, or my mother, or you, for what I did?

I'm getting fucking sick of everyone blaming someone/something else for what happens!

Is there a buck, and if so, where does it stop?!?!

By now you've already answered most of these questions one way or another.

So, finally, I ask you, were you responsible for how you answered, or was it the books you've read, the courses you've done, the people you've listened to, the media, or are you a natural at discerning the Absolute Truth?

So many questions... So few bullets*...

*Note to Big Brother: This is not an incitement to armed rebellion, it is merely a figure of speech. Google the phrase "so few bullets" before you send in the clowns, ya fucking paranoid wankers!

violence... what is it good for....

On the news...

Scene one: Protesters are on a rampage, they are dispaying violence and aggression towards the police/troops. They are smashing storefront windows, they look like the Vandals sacking Rome. Reasonable viewers are repulsed by the behaviour of the protesters and start to justify the violence exhibited by the police/troops. Many protesters who do not believe in violence go away dispirited and disgusted and disassociate themselves with that protest and do not return if the protest runs over several days. Those reasonable viewers who might have had some sympathy with the cause are nevertheless deterred from joining the protest because of the unruly and violent behaviour they had seen on TV. Only a hard-core of violent and unruly yobboes is left in the end to be beaten and bloodied in "combat".

These kinds of protests generally fail, leaving many of their less-violent erstwhile supporters of the cause disillusioned, wary of ever joining another protest. Their cause is discredited in the eyes of the general public.

Scene two: Protesters behaving peacefully and the police/troops getting violent with them. Reasonable viewers sypathise with the protesters and see the authorities as being wrong. As a result, many previously undecided citizens begin to side with the protesters. And if such protests continue over several days, the crowd generally mushrooms in direct proportion to the degree of orderlyness and peacefullness exhibited by the protesters. A great feeling of solidarity is engendered and it acts like a magnet to many who sympathise with the protesters' cause. It becomes a thing people want to be part of.

As we've seen many times in recent history, this kind of protest gathers more strength the longer it is maintained and has often toppled the most violent and powerful regimes who, the more violence they use against peaceful protesters, drive an ever greater number of people to join the protest and enrage those who once supported the regime. Provided there is a sufficiently large intital groundswell, this kind of protest invariably succeeds in achieving its aims.

I've studied TV video of the Ukrainian Orange Revolution. They were well organised, well disciplined, and totally committed to non-violence. They had special squads of ex-military personnel creating buffers between violent opponents and the rest of the their demonstrators and all they did was absorb any violence that was dished out without retaliation whilst resolutely standing their ground. They also quelled any violence erupting on their own side. this had a calming effect on the crowd and gave the demonstrators a sense of security, solidarity, and integrity. It was organised, brilliantly heroic, and totally effective.

But will the union and left-wing organisers in this country ever learn such effective and intelligent methods? I doubt it. They still justify and defend the old biffo way too much. Confronting/antagonising/attacking the police/troops is the way to go! Yo! And they wonder why they invariably fail to garner enough support for their cause to succeed. They must think the general public is as stupid as they are.

"Their eyes were dull, their heads were flat, they have no brains at all." A.B. Patterson

Wake up Lefties, and get rid of leaders/organisers who advocate or condone aggressive methods. They are losers looking to go out in a blaze of glory. They will not win.

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
Gandhi (About advocating non-violent civil disobedience.)

Here endeth the lesson...

navel gazing...

I notice I'm so full of self-doubt (low self esteem) that when people say positive things about this blog or me, this same self-doubt immediately either disbelieves, trivialises, diminishes or in some other way tries to deny any validity in what is said.

Same thing happens when I do my pathetic number and people come in here in droves to offer support and encouragement. I then beat myself up for having been so pathetic, and I accuse myself of having somehow gone on a sick sympathy-seeking mission.

Maybe I should go back into therapy/counselling, but I got so sick of that stuff because somehow I seemed to be negating it too.

I don't understand why people bother with my rantings but if it wasn't for the feedback (comments), I'm sure I'd have pulled it off the net by now. And that's another thing. I notice that I'm addicted to the feedback. I die a thousand deaths when comments seem to dry up. I'm sure it's not healthy for me to feel this way. It's bound to be addictive.

Ironically, this is nearly my only social interaction with the outside world. I've long ago trashed all the friendships I used to have. I shun my relatives. I just couldn't cope with the moronic triviality and sheep-like stupidity of their lives. I don't even get out of the house except to go shopping. I'm a pathetic, boorish, opinionated recluse. To quote Graucho Marx, "I wouldn't join any club that would have me as a member." An extension of this is that I wouldn't believe anyone who says nice things about me (BUT DON'T STOP!!)

I don't know why my partner hasn't thrown me out yet. She must truly love me (or is it co-dependence?) And again I notice this voice that is my low self-esteem telling me that I am pathetic and I must be making her life hell and if I truly loved here I'd get the hell out of her life so she can find someone else, someone more worthy.

Oh, all of this has been done to death in counselling, but no amount of rational thinking seems to change this undercurrent of self-doubt and self-loathing.

I call it my pathetic-loop. It's where my depression comes from. It's where my suicide thoughts come from. Oh all sorts of people have given me advice and encouragement but "the beat goes on, the beat goes on..." It just doesn't end. It never ends.

Medication? Chemicals? ECT? Fuck off!

So, have we all finished vomiting yet, boys and girls?

anatomy of a dummy spit...

What got up my nose? Why did I go apeshit this last week? Well, it started with Howard announcing he was sending another 450 troops to Iraq. I raised an eybrow, thought about the reasons he gave, and decided it was benign enough, perhaps even a shift towards an active peace-keeping role, as well as helping to train the Iraqi army to assume responsibility for security in Iraq. It looked like the embryo of a responsible exit strategy. On the face of it. I was well aware of Howard's capacity for being less than straight-up with the Australian people, so I made a mental note to keep an eye on how this would actually turn out.

But in the media and the blogosphere, the pundits went apeshit. Some used this latest announcement as proof that Howard had once again misled the people. Others immediately saw us getting sucked deeper into another Vietnam. And a few super-intellingent soothsayers combined the two. All of it was just anti-Howard propaganda as blatantly crap as that put out by Howard's cheer squad (the Devines, the Bolts, the Hendersons, etc, etc.) which they so love to deride.

And so I just snapped. Here was I, a fucked-in-the-head, PTSD-affected Vietnam vet, splattering my crap all over the blogosphere, not even bothering to try to be objective or balanced, and these überpundits, who in their own lunchtimes are oh-so fucking credibility-laden and erudite were spraying their froth and spittle all over place disguised as examples of astute observation. It was nothing of the sort. It was reactive crap and conjecture dressed in the gaudy clothes of faux incisive and informed commentary.

I started to lose it... So I asked one such blogger some pointed questions and got back more than a truckload of self-righteous rhetoric along with the old evasive "answer the question with a question" crap. I used to repect this person, but I took offence at what I saw as defensive self-justification and evasiveness. And so I just totally lost it...

[linking fiasco censored/elided in the interests of good taste and decorum]

Yep, still spitting chips! Sick of political/activist bloggers putting the boot into their fave targets but not being willing to be challenged or confronted themselves.

Go on, have a go at me. I'm good for it...
.

thanks leunig...

Just replace "Iraq" with "Vietnam" and the story's the same one...

So many opinions, so little experience...

Fuck the lot of you arseholes...

Oh yeah, you read the "right" books, hang around the "right" group, dress the "right" way, see the "right" movies, write the "right" stuff, AND YOU'RE A FUCKING EXPERT ON WORLD AFFAIRS!!!

Get fucked!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!