Wake in Fright

Anguished Shane

G'day Possums,

The 1961 novel by Kenneth Cook, made into a film in 1971 and soon to be released as a TV series, "Wake in Fright," I think is a perfectly apt metaphor for the present state of the nation.

Reviewing the shambles of the ruling rabble's cobbled policy agenda it appears like outback paintings of Drysdale, Nolan or Pugh or as Cook writes: "The three buildings made up the township of Tiboonda. All were timber and iron, all built in the monotonous, low box form that characterizes western architecture; all were riddled with white ants and dry rot. They stood in the plain abjectly, as though they no longer made any serious claim to constitute a township."

Much like the "Two-Up" game where  John Grant, Wake in Fright's main character foolishly tries to win enough money to repay his outback teaching bond by betting all his 6 weeks holiday pay; a parliamentary attack on Labor by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop over foreign donations from Chinese supporters backfired badly when the opposition riposted with questions about an entity called the "Julie Bishop Glorious Foundation", set up by a wealthy Chinese supporter...."He turned, staring, and walked out of the building, out into the night, walking rigidly, transfixed by the magnitude of his loss."

Health Minister Greg Hunt, Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar and Human Services Minister Alan Tudge were all ordered to appear in the Victorian Supreme court "to make any submissions as to why they should not be referred for prosecution for contempt." After comments published in The Ugly American's rag "The Oz" claiming that the Vic. judiciary were handing down lighter sentences for terrorists as part of "ideological experiments" and that their leftist bias was calling the law into disrepute.

"The kangaroo had split open and trailed entrails for a dozen yards. Its body was so shattered that bones stood out from the skins every few inches white and glistening."

The brutality of the novels blood-lusted kangaroo hunt  bears real comparison to the open warfare this ruling rabble are waging incessantly on all sections of the judiciary in their rabid attempts to deflect any criticism of their born-to-rule actions. 

$90,000,000.00 compensation has just been paid out to refugees in concentration camps on Manus and Nauru rather than have class actions go to court; an admission of guilt that Dodo Dutton promptly but erroneously, blamed on Labor!

"Joe and Dick started off to look at the damage to the car, but Tyldon lingered, took out his own knife and neatly castrated the carcass."

The Vic Supreme court has yet to announce whether it will proceed with the contempt charges but if it doesn't, and accepts the stupid trio's "regretful words" then the rabble have won again in pushing back democracy and the rule of law.

Shades of Germany 1933.

"Three of the kangaroos were dead. One had its leg broken and looked at them with undisturbed eyes.

Joe smashed its head in with a branch he broke off a dead tree.

Grant was surprised that he did not feel particularly upset at the mass carnage. They were, after all, only kangaroos."

This excuse for a government, day by day, further loses the plot of what real governance means. And by adhering to their IPA masters free market script, clearly demonstrate not only their irrelevance as custodians of a "national interest" but also the fact that they are just a continuation of the historically self-centred ruling rabbles who have made lives miserable for millions in past centuries!

"Then he thought, almost aloud:

I can see quite clearly the ingenuity whereby a man may be made mean or great exactly by the same circumstances."

Hoo-roo Petals,

Shane

Wake in Fright: Kenneth Cook  (1929-1987) 1961, Published Penguin 1967-1973

The Orthodox Stench of Corruption

Shane in Ferns

G'day Possums,

Mrs Wombat and I had a little sojourn in "Warby" recently and it reminded us somewhat of the town of Glastonbury in England.

All the pics that follow are from its surrounds.

The Ruling Rabble, fellow-traveller apparatchiks and other assorted entitled had a memoriam, a get-together some weeks ago to eulogise their hero and Liberal Party founder, "Ming Menzies" and his "Forgotten People" speech. That in their orthodoxy they had their dates wrong and their "memoriam" was a historical confection was of no import to them;  particularly "Mings" adulation of Hitler prior to the war and who as PM was selling iron to the Japanese just before WW2, hence his sobriquet, "Pig-Iron Bob:" and also the fact that he "went missing" in London for months, leaving Australia completely unprepared for the coming Pacific conflict was of no relevance to them in their re-enactment.

What matters most to the Ruling Rabble is the public facade of respectability, the pretence of fiscal rectitude and the impression of solidity.

This fractured orthodoxy was well demonstrated recently when the monies paid to the ineligible and now sacked right-wing Senator, Bob Day (apparently $130,000.00) have been "forgiven," but the data matching program informed private debt collectors are still chasing down citizen's welfare debts as miniscule as $20.00 with pensioners being hunted, too.

Don't do as I do, do as I say. 

Double standards = Orthodoxy.

 

Warburton

Enter, stage right: Trade Minister Andrew, Reboxetine Robb. 

Paid $100,000.00 by a Chinese businessman for his election funding. The day before the Federal election, he signed up to a $880,000.00 pa job with the same Chinese firms who months before were awarded a 99 year lease on the Port of Darwin. Subsequently, one month after being elected Reboxetine leaves parliament!

As this little piece of chicanery was a trifle more news and noteworthy than Silly Sam Dastyari's $5500.00 worth of Chinese "donations," prime miniature Truffles, worried that the stench of their orthodoxy was becoming more apparent:  Asbestos Bishop also had her "seat" warmed to the tune of $800,000.00 of Chinese electoral munificence too,  found some 5 minutes of solace in a desperate "Look-Over-There" moment by blaming Tardis State premier Dan-the-Man Andrews for the Victorian parole board's decision to parole an ice-addled criminal nutter who, claiming allegiance to both Islamic State and Al Queada,(?) murders an innocent man, takes a woman hostage and wounds three policemen before himself being shot and killed.

What a saviour of probity is "terrorism," eh?

 

Warburton

It's a Ballarat tradition... there's a Prime Minister's walk in the botanic gardens on Lake Wendouree with portrait busts of all the country's PM's.

It may be unfortunate for the nation that Rabid-the Hun, Abbott ever existed but now he too is there in effigy, stiffly fouling the rural environment. 

Sometimes we need to be reminded of our electoral and educational failings.

Interestingly, Julia Gillard's portrait in this line-up was once the most attacked and defiled but as Rabid's has already had a crown of onions adorn it, I dare say petals, that attention to his visage might well soon overtake that of his bete' noire's.

 

Warburton

Watching The Drum (ABC) recently I was again struck how the orthodoxy of opinion has become the mere rote of the narrow, neo-conservative.

Discussing Corbyn's almost victory in the British elections all of the panel, left and right (what was that faecal matter from Quadrant, Cater, doing there btw?) were happily repeating their truisms of how unelectable Corbyn was seemingly oblivious to the fact  that their opinions did not in any way, accord with the reality of the vote!

This is what I had noted during our last federal election:

"Early in the evening during the election broadcast I was looking at the performances of Sales, Uhlmann and Crabb and also noting the growing number of seats that were falling to Labor and sensed that "something is up here" but this panel kept blithely brown-nosing Scummo and often interrupting and ignoring Wong until : Bang: 1,2,3, Tassie seats had gone, then suddenly they were all at sea having to deal with a reality that was way out of their comfort zones. They never recovered and their bias' took a battering for the rest of the night."

http://shanewombat.blogspot.com.au/2016/07/not-with-bang-but-whimper.html

Warburton

The smug, self satisfied repetition of ruling rabble assertions as question, the mindless repetition of neo-liberal theory as substitute for discussion, the banality of the current orthodoxy is deadening debate and dumbing further down a nation not generally noted for the liveliness of its thinking.

 When you see Fictions Frydenberg allowed to blather on nonsensically about energy costs and the failures of a privatized market being the fault of the alternative energy producers and then his opposition being question-cajoled into agreeing to the same you know you're witnessing the proliferation of propaganda by a player not a journalist.

When you hear constant commentary that there is partisan agreement to Finkel's energy review before it is even released you know that you are listening to the softening-up propaganda of what-you-must-believe. Personal opinion and analysis is being corrupted from the start.

When you have to suffer through Andrew Probyn's (ABC 7.30) sing-song "opinion" homily's attempting to rhapsodise right-wing cant ..Oi!

But for once you can only agree... he can't!

Better that Probyn, be given time off to study a talent; a real wordsmith of popular culture like Clive James and discover that James knew not just his word's worth but that with them he drew from reality succinct images of value and meaning.

Warburton

It has been said that The Ugly American, Murdoch stormed out in high dudgeon from The Daily Mail's London election room as the exit polls began suggesting that his vituperative campaign against Corbyn had failed miserably..... I hope that is true. 

I wonder too, if Lynton Crosby is feeling aggrieved again?

Two elections old boy, two flops....times up?

 

Warburton

"There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile.

He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.

He bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse,

And they all lived together in a little crooked house.

 

Warburton

Hoo-roo possums

Shane